


Faith

by Yahtzee



Series: Father Charles [3]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bathtubs, Catholic Character, Love Letters, Military, Multi, Racism, Religious Content, Reunions, Separations, Sibling Love, Sibling Rivalry, Unrequited Love, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:55:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many of the pressures in Charles Xavier's life -- the sacrifices Erik and Charles make to be together -- the constant tension of being closeted -- Charles' relationship to the Church he once served as a priest -- his distance from his sister -- come to the forefront in 1967. Because in that year, for Charles, peace is no longer an option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Describe the nature of your belief which is the basis of your claim._

_Explain how, when and from whom or what source you acquired the belief which is the basis of your claim._

_Describe the actions and behavior in your life which in your opinion most conspicuously demonstrate the consistency and depth of your religious convictions._

_Describe carefully the creed or official statements of said religious sect or organization as it relates to participation in war._

 

 

 

“Your SSS150 was filled out in … considerable detail.”

Charles only nodded.

“We don’t get very many people quoting St. Augustine in the original Latin.”

“I did provide translations.”

The essays had been overkill; he knew this and had known it the entire time he wrote. Hopefully they wouldn’t take it as an attempt to be superior. But he had wanted to say his peace, and on this subject, that was not easily said.

“Your background – well, let’s just say it’s obvious you’re not one of those cowards. One of the ones who decided he was a pacifist only when he pulled a low number.” His main questioner pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose with one stumpy finger.  Charles bit back his support for other objectors; he was here to argue his own case, not anyone else’s. Erik had reminded him of that over and over during breakfast. For Erik’s sake, at least, he would stick to the questions posed.

He sat on a folding chair in a large room that somehow managed to feel airless. In front of him, at a long metal table with a plastic top, sat three middle-aged men whose faces betrayed neither contempt nor compassion. They might have been weighing which grade of concrete to use in a building project.

Another of them said, “You don’t think we have a responsibility to defend freedom? To make the world a better place?”

“To insist on a perfect world – to insist that it is within our grasp, within mortal power, if only we work our will on it – that is a dangerous position to take,” Charles said. “I do not take it. I don’t think the United States should attempt to impose its doctrine on another nation.”

“The Soviets are imposing their doctrine on North Vietnam. Pulling the puppet strings, you better believe it. But you’re not against that, I guess.”

Charles shook his head. “I oppose that just as strongly. However, I am not being asked to serve in the North Vietnamese army.”

The angrier one – the one on the left – leaned forward. “So what would you do if the Commies took over New York City? Would you just sit there?”

“I would not. Pacifism is not the same thing as capitulation. I would work for passive resistance. I could organize protests, for instance. Work behind the scenes to arrange shutdowns of factories for any industry the occupiers relied on. Look for ways to undermine enemy morale. There would be countless ways to resist, and resist effectively, without violence.” He’d had this argument Erik before, back when it was only theory – late-night bickering inspired by a bottle of wine and an episode of “Star Trek.”

This didn’t seem to impress the angry one at all. “So you put a higher premium on your own ‘purity’ or ‘conscience’ than you do on other people’s lives.”

“I don’t refuse to participate in combat because it offends my delicate sensibilities. I refuse because it is immoral. Christians must strive, always, for healing and reconciliation. We must act out of love for all.”

He would gladly have bitten back the words, true though they were. No doubt the three men behind the table considered themselves good Christians.  Charles tried not to condemn those who bore witness in a way to which he did not feel himself called.

And, on general principles, it would probably have been wiser not to annoy the draft board.

The one in the middle – the one who at least felt Charles was not a coward – folded his hands together. “Forgive me, but – if you believe that you can do away with all the evil in the world through good thoughts and wishful thinking – it’s naïve, isn’t it?”

Charles took a deep breath. “Sin is inevitable. Evil is inevitable. That’s part of what it means to be human. But we cannot respond to evil with evil.” He held out his hands as though he could weigh the concepts like so much gold in his palms. “There is the doctrine of sin, but there is also the doctrine of grace. Humanity is corrupted by sin, but illuminated by the grace of God. It is our work on this earth to give life to that grace. So we must not respond to evil by compounding it. We must respond by overcoming it.”

One of the men said, “So you’re willing to help your fellow man." 

“Always. But I am not willing to kill him.”

The angry one had a gleam in his eye as he asked, “Do you think Christ would help civilians but refuse to help soldiers?”

“Of course not. There is no limit to God’s mercy.”

Charles knew what the answer meant even before he spoke. He said it anyway, because it was the truth.

Quietly he finished, “There are no exceptions.”

 

**

 

When he arrived home, instead of pulling into the garage he parked the car well out on the drive and walked the rest of the way. Ice crunched between the gravel, and the air’s bite was sharp. Charles looked up at the gray sky, which was low and heavy with snow, and hoped the cold air would brace him. But then he reached the front door, opened it into light and warmth and a Christmas tree they hadn’t yet taken down, and furious growls that made him smile despite everything.

“I’m going to get you – ” Erik crawled forward on his hands and knees, fingers turned under as though they were claws.

His prey giggled. “I’m gonna get you first!”  With that, Jean flung herself toward Erik, and though he wrestled her down, he kept pretending that she was making a very good show of it.  Although he kept growling, play-acting for their daughter, Erik’s grin held more joy than Charles had once ever dreamed to see.

It was difficult now to remember that Erik had once resisted bringing Jean into their family. Charles sometimes thought, for Erik, the sun now rose and set on that child. 

Jean, from her place on the floor, was the one who spotted him. “Daddy!” She immediately scooted away from Erik, whose smile faded as he sat back on his knees. “Come play bears with us!”

He wanted so badly to do that, to just drop everything and be silly with his little girl, but going any longer without talking to Erik would be cruel. Scooping Jean up in his arms, he kissed her soundly on the forehead and said, “We can play bears after dinner. Weren’t you going to color some pictures for me today? I want to see those. Go get them for me while I talk to Uncle Erik for a moment.”

She frowned, stubborn as any child who knows full well that she has just heard an excuse. But Jean understood things beyond her years, sometimes – as if she could sense his feelings as intensely as he sometimes glimpsed hers. Without further protest, she allowed herself to be put down, then ran toward the room in the rear of the house that had once been his mother’s office and was now where Jean’s crayons and toys more-or-less stayed.

Erik rose from the floor, black turtleneck and hair still slightly askew from playtime. “So? How did it go? Did they believe you?”

“They believed me – ”

“Thank God,” Erik said, and for once it did not sound like an empty oath in his mouth. He took Charles’ face between his hands. “I hadn’t been that afraid since I was a child.”

Given what Erik’s childhood had been, Charles knew exactly what this meant. Relief shone from Erik, a light that had to be put out.

“Erik, they classified me as 1-AO.” He covered Erik’s hands with his own, willing strength to him through the touch.

“… what does that mean?”

“They won’t send me into combat, but – I’m considered eligible for noncombatant duty.”

“Like – like teaching, or the Peace Corps, or – ”

Charles quickly kissed Erik’s palm. “No. 1-AOs provide support to the military.” He tried to keep his voice very steady. “They say I’m most likely to be trained as a medic.”

Erik didn’t reply for a moment. He stood there, very still, his hands going cold against Charles’ skin.  His words were strained, voice stretched thin and tight: “You have to go to Vietnam.”

“There’s no guarantee that I’ll draw war service.” Even as he spoke, though, they both knew the odds.  

“Fuck.” Erik turned away and walked back into the living room; the gray wintry light through the window outlined his body as he stood there, staring outward at nothing, hands on his hips and breaths coming fast.

They ought to have been comforting each other, Charles thought. But Erik was trying to find his strength for Charles’ sake, the same way he was trying to find his for Erik.  Strange how love could keep two men on opposite sides of the room.

But now Jean was running back to him, red curls flying, eager to for him to see her latest scrawled attempt at art. Charles allowed his daughter to take over, lost himself in her pursuits, and by the time Erik joined them a few minutes later, they were both able to smile for her.

 

**

 

The discussion began again upstairs, in the library, after Jean had been put to bed. 

The menorah still sat on the mantelpiece – they were terrible about putting decorations away, Charles thought dully. He’d found unexpected delight in their Hanukkah celebration – more secret than the gaudy Christmas display downstairs, more private, and yet deeply joyful. It had been the first year Jean had liked the candles and the chocolate coins, and she had even listened to the stories Erik told … at least, she had listened as well as any 3-year-old could be expected to. Although Charles was of course raising Jean as a Catholic, he wanted her to understand and respect Erik’s traditions. For his part, Erik had said he intended to be honest with Jean about his lack of faith in God when she was old enough to ask, but was content to let Charles teach as he believed. 

Erik had joked that they would probably wind up splitting the difference and rearing a devoutly religious Jew. That had been only a couple of weeks ago. Right now, jokes and laughter seemed a thousand miles away.

“And the fact that you’re a father – the only parent Jean has, so far as the world knows – ”

“They grant deferments for that only when the absence will create a ‘profound hardship.’” Charles gestured in a way that took in the entire grandiose mansion they lived in. “Not easily argued in my case.”

“They can’t have believed your convictions weren’t sincere. You were a priest! How much farther would you have to go to convince them?” Erik continued pacing the room like a caged thing. He’d been beside himself ever since the notice had arrived, so much so that Charles had assumed Erik would be better able to deal with bad news than the grind of suspense. Apparently not.

“They were convinced, Erik. They believed me. If they didn’t, I’d be I-A. But my convictions do allow me to provide support to soldiers even if I’m not one myself.”

“And I suppose you had to tell the truth about this.” Erik’s anger boiled at such a pitch that it could scald anyone who came near, even Charles. “The absolute, virtuous truth.”

Charles slumped into the corner of the couch. All day, he’d been holding himself rigid – physically, mentally, emotionally. It was harder work than it looked. “You know that I lied to them. I told the lie I had to tell. Beyond that, I explained my objections fully. I hoped it would be enough. It wasn’t.”

For a few moments they were both quiet. Something flickered behind Erik’s eyes, something that made him more stricken than all the rest. Charles realized what it was even before Erik said, “Maybe you should reveal the whole truth.”

“I can’t.”

“They might not tell anyone.”

“They would. There’s nothing holding them to confidentiality. And you know how New Salem loves gossip.”

Ironically, it was gossip itself that had saved them for so long – that, and the fact that the great house on Greymalkin Lane remained isolated by its vast grounds.

The isolation allowed others to believe the story that Erik Lehnsherr, a friend of the Xavier family, rented a guest house on the grounds rather than living with Charles. After all, other such friends had occasionally enjoyed similar arrangements over the past few decades. Wasn’t it only natural that a former priest, still dedicated to philanthropy and charity, might offer another social worker a good home at a cheap price?

Gossip had taken care of the rest. Charles had put together, from various half-heard whispers and his own extraordinary insights, that the town believed Erik to be madly in love with Raven rather than her brother. As for Charles’ role in this drama, he was thought to be too dogmatically religious to allow his sister to marry a Jew, however well he might like the man. (His departure from the church was in turn ascribed to the liberalizations of Vatican II, though this process had hardly begun when he’d left; gossip was not scrupulous about timelines.) Had anyone ever been so grateful for a rumor? They had all laughed about it together, and a few times Erik and Raven had even gone into town without Charles to shop, take in a movie and otherwise fan the flames.

Had Charles told the draft board today, _I am a homosexual; Erik Lehnsherr lives with me as my lover_ – he would not have had to go into the service. The price would have been the exposure of their shared life.

And then they probably would have lost Jean.

The adoption had taken almost a full year to be finalized – though he was Jean’s only legal guardian, though she had no living family – because the prejudice against a single man adopting was so high. If the judge had ever found out about him and Erik, Jean would certainly have been taken away.  If the truth came out now – most people drew no distinction between “homosexual” and “child molester.” In their view, such people were all sex perverts, all the same, and obviously unfit to raise a little girl. Authorities had removed children even from their biological parents in such cases. In addition, he and Erik could be prosecuted for breaking the law. If they were jailed for sodomy, then there would be no chance of keeping Jean, none at all.   

“No, you could never tell,” Erik said quietly; he hugged himself as if against the cold though he stood close to the fire. “Can you – appeal the decision? Surely this isn’t final – some local burghers sitting behind their desks and weighing your life in their hands –”

“I could take it to the state appeal board, but that would involve an FBI background check.”

Erik’s first response was to shut his eyes against the firelight. The FBI background check would unearth the truth about them more surely than draft-board gossip ever could.

To have to choose between risking his life and losing Jean – it was like being cleaved in two, Charles thought. Yet there was never any question what his choice would be, or Erik’s, either.

“So we’ll leave,” Erik said, turning back toward Charles. “We’ll go to Canada, like the others. Or some other country where you wouldn’t be extradited. Hell, we can join Raven in Switzerland.”

“Go on the run? Actually flee the country with Jean?" 

“Why not? We could do it. Transfer your assets overseas, buy the plane tickets, and in a few days we’re gone. There’s no need to come back here.”

“You’d leave Immigrant Outreach?” It was the part of the suggestion that surprised Charles most.

Erik hesitated. His commitment to his work was deep and powerful, one of the guiding forces in his life. Only his ability to help others who had been displaced by war had allowed him to continue on after the losses he’d suffered. And yet he squared his shoulders and said, “If that’s what it takes to save you.”

Charles felt his heart rending. Or was that Erik’s heart, Erik’s pain, that he felt as his own? They had given up so much for one another; this sacrifice, at least, would not be required. “I won’t run.”

“What do you mean, you won’t?”

“I’m no better than the countless young men already being sent to fight. Just richer. More able to make an escape. If I took advantage of that, it would be – worse than cowardice.”

“Principle!” Erik’s fury burned brighter again. “Honor! Morality! Has it ever occurred to you, Charles, that there’s a morality in taking care of your own family? In refusing to abandon the people who love you and need you?”

“Of course it has. But I’m not going to dodge the draft, and you know it. You knew before you even asked.”

Erik slumped against the mantelpiece. “Yes, I knew. But maybe I hoped you’d see sense for once in your life.”

They had to concentrate on the positive, Charles thought. On what they knew, not what they feared. “It’s like I said – there’s no guarantee I’ll go to Vietnam. After I’m trained as a medic, or whatever else they choose to do with me, I could as easily be sent to … Boston. South Carolina. Even Hawaii, if we’re lucky.”

“When will you know?” Erik ‘s face was painted warm gold by the fire, but there was no mistaking how drawn he looked. “How soon? What happens now?”

“Apparently I’ll get my orders during or just after basic training. Which I’m to report for in two weeks.”

“Two weeks!”

His nerves frayed to the limit, Charles held out his hand. “Erik, I’m sorry, I realize this is painful for you, but could you please just stop shouting?”

Instantly Erik was by his side, on his knees, Charles’ hands in his. “I’m sorry. You know I wasn’t shouting at you, don’t you? I was shouting at - at the whole fucking world.”

“I know.” Charles closed his fingers more tightly around Erik’s, leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “ I know.”

Erik laid his head in Charles’ lap. “I never wanted you to understand what war was.”

“I understand it better than you might think.” He had seen wounds decades old burning in the hearts of former soldiers, had heard whispered confessions of atrocities in Italy or the South Pacific that shocked him to the core. And Erik himself had taught Charles perhaps the ultimate lessons in what evil could be, how close and how powerful it could become. Even now, the pushed-up sleeve of his turtleneck showed the first few numbers of his tattoo from Auschwitz.

“You don’t, Charles. It hasn’t touched you. Hasn’t scarred you. I never wanted you to be scarred the way I am.” 

“It may not come to that. Let’s not mourn for what hasn’t yet happened.”

Erik nodded, but his eyes remained dark, fixated on ghosts from his nightmarish past. His thumbs brushed along Charles’ thighs, gentle comforting strokes back and forth. “Are you very afraid?”

Charles hesitated, waiting for the most honest words. “No, but – I think that’s mostly because it’s not real to me yet. What’s real is that I have to leave you and Jean.”

“Don’t.” Erik’s voice choked off, and he had to swallow hard before continuing. “Don’t talk about that now. Like you said – it hasn’t yet happened. You’re here tonight. With me.”

They made love right there, clothes strewn on the Persian carpet, their bare skin painted with warmth by the fire. Neither of them wanted to part from the other even for an instant, so they contented themselves with hands, lips, tongues. Once again Charles marveled at how Erik’s ferocity could turn to gentleness, how a feeling as mysterious as love could express itself so eloquently through touch. How an act he had been brought up to consider not merely sin but also perversion – was a pathway to a kind of togetherness, of utter acceptance and devotion, that Charles could only call holy. As Erik groaned against Charles’ shoulder, shuddered in his climax, Charles closed his eyes refused to think of a time when Erik would be any farther away than he was right now.

 

**

 

Early the next evening, Raven returned home from her holiday in Lucerne. Erik was upstairs bathing Jean, and Charles decided to seize the moment to talk with his sister alone – even if that meant not giving her so much as a chance to take off her coat or put away her skis.

“They can’t do this.” She stood very still, sable coat speckled with snowflakes that hadn’t entirely melted yet. “They can’t just – snatch you up like that.”

“They’ve snatched up tens of thousands of other men. Why would I be any different? You know I had to register after I left the priesthood.”

“But still.” Raven braced her hands against the nearest chair. Her face – always startlingly changeable, as though she were several women wrapped into one – now appeared more girlish to Charles than it had in a long time. How long had it been since he’d noticed the baby fat still rounding her cheeks?

They had adored each other from the day his parents brought her home from the orphanage, and yet they had never been truly close. Charles’ piety served as a stark contrast to Raven’s rebellious nature. While he had been serving as an altar boy, she had been sneaking cigarettes from their mother’s purse. Yet her eyes had shone with pride on the day he was ordained as a priest, just as Charles had delighted in showing her off to parishioners when she came to visit in one of her high-fashion outfits.

The first year after he’d left the priesthood, he and Raven had forged a stronger relationship. No prude, she had long suspected her brother’s homosexuality, acknowledging it almost before he had. She had accepted Charles’ relationship with Erik easily enough – rarely speaking of it but never objecting.  Besides, she obviously liked Erik in his own right; they were similar in many ways, with their quick tempers, irreverence and wit.  Raven had welcomed Erik on the nights he visited and spent time with Charles on the nights he didn’t. He and his sister had sat up watching late movies and even making Rice Krispie treats a time or two. Give them footie pajamas, Charles had thought, and they would have been just like kids again.

Then Erik had moved in, and Raven had – not moved out so much as stepped back. While she still had her room and kept many of her things at the mansion, she spent very little time there any longer; sometimes Charles thought she visited only to go out with Erik for the afternoon and fuel the rumors that protected their household. Her pied a terre on the Upper East Side was her true home these days, and every month or two seemed to bring a new trip to an ever more exotic destination: Rio, Honolulu, Santorini. Somehow she found a way to spend even more money on clothes, which Charles would previously have believed to be impossible. At times he’d even wondered whether his sister was becoming a shallow socialite, content to flutter colorfully over the world without ever touching the ground –

\--but then he always found out he was wrong. Like the way she’d lit up with joy after discovering that he was going to adopt Jean. Or the depth of sorrow and fear in her eyes now.

Raven was his sister, and she loved him. That was all that mattered. And that was why he could ask this of her.

“Please, before Erik comes downstairs, I need to talk with you about something,” Charles said quickly. “Of course I’ve run this by him, too, and he agrees with me, but he finds the subject upsetting.”

“Do I get to be upset too?” she snapped. “Christ, Charles – ”

He hated it when she took the name of the Lord in vain but had long since given this up as a lost cause.

“—give me a minute to breathe, would you? I still can’t believe this is actually happening.”

Raven, too, could lash out at the very person she wanted most to protect; she and Erik truly were much alike. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I know you’re very shocked, and I hate rushing this discussion, but it’s important.”

“Okay, okay.” She brushed back a lock of her tawny hair, nodding slowly like someone still half in a bad dream. “What is it?”

“I have to – make certain preparations, just in case.”

“Don’t say it!” Raven had a superstitious streak.

Charles kept on. “I would prefer to make Erik Jean’s legal guardian, but I’m not sure he’d be allowed to adopt her. It was hard enough for me, and I’m a U.S. citizen. A former priest, and our family has lived here forever. Erik doesn’t have my advantages. He might well be denied custody. She could be taken away.”

_If I were killed._ The unspoken words hung in the air, even as Charles refrained from saying them for Raven’s sake.

“So here’s what I want to do,” Charles said. “I’m going to make you Jean’s legal guardian. A single woman would have much less trouble adopting to begin with, and with you as her aunt already … it would be easy, probably. But I’ll arrange for Jean’s inheritance to go into a trust, and make Erik the executor. That would give him some legal authority in her life.”

“Stop talking about inheritances,” Raven whispered. “Just stop it.”

“We have to get through this. Do you understand? We have to settle these things. I have to know that if I – that if something happened, you’d be willing to raise Jean along with Erik. That you could stay here instead of going all around the world for a while. And that you wouldn’t keep Erik from being her father, in any way.”

“Of course I wouldn’t! What do you think I am?”

Charles crossed the room and embraced her tightly. “My beautiful sister,” he said. “I think you are my sister and my friend and one of the very best people in my life.”

Raven’s arms slid around him. Within her he sensed a turmoil even deeper than her fear for him, but then, he’d just given his sister a staggering responsibility. It had to be as unnerving for her to accept as it was for him to ask.

And it was very, very hard to think of Jean growing up without him.

_It won’t happen_ , he told himself. _Statistically, you’re most likely to come home without a scratch._

But they had to be prepared.

 

**

 

Charles refused to treat his departure for basic training as a big deal. “Only six weeks,” he kept saying, as though it were one of Raven’s international jaunts.  Erik and Raven went along with this as best they could. Nobody spoke of what would follow basic training.

But six weeks – that was bad enough. Charles had never been apart from Erik or Jean for so long. Even that separation would devastate him. How was he supposed to endure a year without them? Although he was no innocent about the dangers of war, Charles could not yet wrap his mind around any wound he might suffer more devastating than being taken away from his family and his home.

Yet the alternative was rank cowardice, so: basic training.

He was sent to Texas, to a special training course for conscientious objectors. The young men Charles met on those first days were for the most part Quakers, Mennonites or Jehovah’s Witnesses, though there were a few university types who joked ruefully about not getting into grad school in time. Few of them were remotely prepared for the grueling ordeal that lay ahead.

Charles, to his surprise, was prepared – at least, mostly. The early hour at which they had to rise was fifteen minutes later than he’d gotten up for morning prayers throughout his career as a priest. Although the drill sergeant had strict standards for the making of beds and the neatness of uniforms, Charles thought the man wasn’t nearly as severe as the priests who had overseen the seminary.  Although it was no pleasure to have his hair shorn or to be served food that was hardly better than slop, neither of these travails was entirely unfamiliar. Having every moment of every day scheduled, observed and judged – he’d been there, too. Charles understood something few other civilians ever did: the demands of true, all-encompassing discipline. He had embraced that life joyfully before; he could endure it now.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t been as well prepared for struggling across an obstacle course while wearing a 40-pound backpack.

“Move your fucking asses!” the drill sergeant bellowed as Charles tried yet again to force himself over the final wall. He had reached it ahead of most of the others, which was meaningless, as he now thought he was likely to die right here. Once again he clutched the plastic netting and began attempting to climb it, though it twisted and jerked under his feet like a bucking bronco. The straps of the heavy backpack seemed as though they would sever his arms from his body at any moment. “Did you faggots think going CO would solve all your problems? The medical pack weighs even more than the combat gear, so the joke’s on you! Get your worthless hides into gear, cocksuckers!”

_Odd to think of cocksucker as an obscenity_ , _when it’s such a pleasant thing to be,_ Charles thought, blinking as drops of sweat stung his eyes. _More pleasant than this, by far._

The mean-spirited, casual, unceasing mockery of homosexuals suffused every moment of Army life. It was, of course, mockery only; the unspoken assumption was that no one here could possibly ever do anything so supposedly vile. Charles was keenly aware of the irony of this attitude being promoted by the same people, in the same place, where the ability to kill another human being was considered a virtue.

Right now, however, he had more immediate problems to deal with. Like this accursed wall.

Once again the netting twisted under him, binding his fingers and leaving him struggling. The weight of the pack felt as though it were deliberately, malevolently towing him downward. His arm muscles burned, and his overheated gut wanted badly to eject its contents. Charles longed to give up and simply let the drill sergeant scream at him, but something within him refused.

This might not be a mere exercise someday. What if he had to do something this hard, or harder, to save another person’s life?

Theoretical possibilities were too weak to move him, though, so Charles forced himself to imagine something even more demanding. _What if it were Erik? What if Erik were in trouble on the other side of that wall, and only you could save him? Get to Erik. Get to him, now!_

And somehow, his body obeyed. Charles righted himself and managed to fling his weight over the top of the wall. After that, the final crawl under the wires seemed simple.

As he reached the finish before anyone else, panting, the drill sergeant barked, “Maybe you’re not a complete pussy after all, Xavier!”

“Sir,” Charles said. He had to gulp in another breath to get out the rest. “Thank you, sir.”

No one in this group had to learn how to shoot. They did, however, have to learn what to do when being shot at. It wasn’t that Charles hadn’t realized this was a possibility, but being told how to take cover, being shown actual pictures of camouflaged enemy soldiers, made it all feel far more immediate.

_Not as immediate as it’s going to feel when it happens_ , he told himself, a joke too black to ever be shared. 

In the truest, deepest sense, Charles was not afraid to die. He did not believe in a child’s storybook heaven with clouds and harps, but he had always known that human beings were more than mere flesh. God had given him the ability to sense souls – to know them intimately – and so he was as confident of everlasting life as he was of the sun rising in the east.

But not to return to Jean – to leave Erik bereaved and lonely yet again in his already harsh life –

When they told him how to take cover, Charles paid close attention.

His favorite part of basic training was, by far, the medical course. Charles had been tempted to stay on to earn graduate degrees in science, specifically genetics; the academic discipline had fascinated him, and the Church would have supported his further education. Ultimately his determination to get to the real work of being a priest had won out. Charles cared more about reality than theory. But here, reality and theory came together. So much of what he’d learned about the human body was made concrete as he learned how to stop bleeding, how to diagnose diseases, how to splint a broken limb. It intrigued him as deeply as any other academic subject ever had, perhaps more so.

The worst thing about basic training – being away from Erik and Jean – remained hard to bear, but he was so perpetually busy and exhausted that Charles found the terrible homesickness only came over him at night, when he would close his eyes and imagine them near, nearer, even in his arms.

_Thank you_ , Charles would pray. _Thank you for creating them. For letting me share their lives. For every moment I have shared with those I love._

And he would be comforted for the few minutes before sleep claimed him.

All in all, he did very well, even on the day when the drill sergeant announced that he had their orders. Every single one of them – every last medic in Charles’ training course, himself included – were headed straight to Vietnam.

Some of the recruits murmured curses or gasped, but Charles remained perfectly at attention. He understood discipline.

 

**

“Look at you,” Erik kept saying. “Just look at you.”

Charles laughed. For the moment, any fears about the future were completely subsumed in the joy of their reunion.  “I still can’t get used to it.” He ran one hand over his close-shorn head. “I have a feeling we’d better try, though. See how thin it is here in the back? Hopefully bald is a look you can learn to like.”

“I’ve learned already.” Erik kissed him soundly, and Charles gave into it. 

Right now they were the only ones at the mansion. Raven had taken Jean to the park so that Erik and Charles could have some time to themselves – and, he suspected, to continue getting to know the little girl she would now help to raise for at least one year. Erik had been the one to pick up Charles at the train station, which had been both joyful and torturous: Joyful to finally see Erik again, to feast his eyes on the sight of him, and yet torturous to have to refrain from kissing him until they were alone.

But they were alone now.

Charles pulled Erik’s sweater over his head, then helped Erik wrestle him out of his olive-green uniform. But as soon as his bare chest was exposed, Erik paused. “Look at you,” he repeated, but with a new, tantalizing note in his voice. 

Vanity, vanity – and yet Charles couldn’t resist a satisfied smile. He’d worked hard enough for it, after all; basic training had put on five pounds of solid muscle. The glow of pure lust in Erik’s eyes warmed him through. “What about this?” he murmured as he began kissing the side of Erik’s throat. “Could you get used to this?”

“Mmm.” Erik’s thumbs traced the new, firm lines of Charles’ abdomen. “Let me try.”

As deeply as Charles felt about lovemaking being sacred, there was something to be said for surrendering to the moment, to the body. Six weeks of sexual deprivation had felt like forever; how had he ever gone without this for years on end?

He pulled Erik close, as he always did when they began. What did he want? The tendrils of a fantasy curled around Charles, ethereal as mist – Charles taking control, being forceful, claiming Erik with almost brutal strength.

Well. That wasn’t how it usually went. Yet Charles found he liked the idea – and he liked it a lot.

“Come here,” Charles said, pushing Erik down onto the bed, and oh, the light in Erik’s eyes when he did --

What with one thing and another, they wound up with barely enough time to pull their clothes back on before Raven returned home with Jean two hours later.

“Hello, sweetheart.” Charles opened his arms for Jean, then hesitated. He’d been gone so long, and she was so tiny – “Do you remember me?”

“You’re my _daddy_!” Jean ran into his embrace, and Raven beamed down at him, and the taste of Erik’s kisses was still sweet in his mouth. Charles thought he had never been so perfectly happy.

But they all knew another leave-taking was all too near.

 

**

 

Two nights before Charles was to ship out for Vietnam, Raven threw him a “Goodbye and Good Luck” party.  Champagne, cake, sandwiches, false high spirits – the usual sort of thing.

The guests were mostly people that he and Erik had worked with at Immigrant Outreach and the counseling center, along with the few parishioners Charles had been able to maintain a relationship with since he left the priesthood. He was moved by how many of them were willing to make the trek out to New Salem, as most of them were Manhattanites, and any distraction from his upcoming departure was welcome.

But more than anything else, he was taken aback by how long it had been since he’d seen – nearly all of them, really.

“Father Jerome!” He put his arms around his old friend, laughing out loud. “And you wore the uniform of the enemy.”

Jerome touched the brim of the Mets cap ruefully. “Only for you, Charles. Only for you.”

During the terrible weeks when he’d realized he had to leave the Church, Father Jerome had been Charles’ main source of emotional support. He’d defied the monsignor to stay in touch with Charles through Immigrant Outreach. And yet Charles had hardly spoken to him in six months.

Some of Erik’s friends were there as well, the few Charles had met. Once Erik had been very close to his rabbi and others who worshipped at the same temple; once Erik had moved in with Charles, however, he had more or less stopped attending. These people who might have been Charles’ friends too … he’d never gotten to know them. His emotional life, and Erik’s, were now lived largely within the boundaries of their home.

_We are so little a part of the world_ , Charles thought. He and Erik had chosen this path; it was the price of being together, of having Jean. They could not tell their friends about their relationship, and so they did not spend as much time with their friends. They had to live apart from the rest of society to live as a couple and as a family, and so they rarely went out anywhere beyond their few usual haunts. He had paid this price without hesitation, as had Erik. But at moments like these, Charles was reminded of how very high the price was.

He watched Erik talking animatedly with a few of his old friends, obviously enjoying himself, gesturing around Jean balanced on his knee. For the moment, at least, the dread of Charles’ departure didn’t lie on him as heavily. Erik had needed this more than Charles knew. More than Erik himself knew, probably.

Charles thought, _It’s unfair._ Although he had always known this, he had never consciously given voice to it before, and the answering rush of anger startled him.

He ducked into the kitchen to collect himself. There he found Father Jerome cutting himself another piece of cake. “Glad you like it,” Charles said, trying his best to smile. “Jean made it. Which is to say, she helped me stir the batter. She’s very proud.”

“Ah, that girl of yours has already become a chef, has she? I’ll be sure to compliment Miss Jean on her masterpiece.” Father Jerome placed his slice on a waiting saucer, then cleared his throat. “I’m glad to have caught you alone, Charles. I wanted to ask if you’d consider taking this with you.”

From his black jacket he pulled a Bible – not just any Bible, but Father Jerome’s cherished Challoner Douay-Rheims, bound in dark-green leather. It had been an ordination gift to him from his older sister, who had died the following month. Charles knew that Bible had never left Father Jerome’s possession, and hardly left his person, in the decades since.

“Father Jerome.” Charles clasped his friend’s hands around the binding of the book. “I’m moved.”

“Perhaps it will bring you luck.”

“You don’t believe in luck any more than I do.” He shook his head slowly. “No. I can’t. It’s one of the kindest things anyone has ever – but I can’t. If something were to happen to it, I’d never forgive myself.”

“You’re to keep it on you at all times,” Father Jerome said, his voice gruff. “Nothing would happen to it then, unless something were to happen to you, and if that’s the case then I won’t be worried about the Good Book, do you understand?”

Charles swallowed the lump in his throat; already the anger was gone, not forgotten but dwarfed by love. “Please, no. I’d rather think of it here, safe, with you. The offer is gift enough. I’ll never forget it.”

Father Jerome sighed. “Have it your own way, then.” His milky blue eyes studied Charles from behind the thick, horn-rimmed spectacles he wore. “How are you bearing up?”

“I’m not afraid. But I hate to leave the people I love." 

A moment’s hesitation – and then Father Jerome said, “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

Erik. He was going to ask about Erik.

But Charles’ gift showed him that Father Jerome did not need to ask – he had suspected for so long that the knowledge was already all but sure. The question was only a way of helping Charles realize that it was safe to answer 

“Mr. Lehnsherr –” Now that the moment had come, Father Jerome couldn’t seem to find the words. “He’s – well, he’s the gentleman in the case, isn’t he?”

Charles let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yes. Yes, he is.”

Church doctrine held that Father Jerome should immediately have begun attempting to save Charles from sin. Instead, he simply nodded. “He seems like a good man. 

“The best of men.” Now that the truth was out to one more person – thus increasing the total number to four, including Erik and himself  – Charles felt an almost unbelievable rush of relief. And, with it, hope. “May I ask a favor of you?”

“Anything, of course.”

Now he was the one struggling for words. “So few people know about me and Erik. Really it’s just you and Raven. If the worst comes to pass – ”

No. Enough euphemism and soft talk.

“If I die, Erik will be devastated. He’s been through so much already in his life. More than any one man should be asked to bear. But Raven will have her own grief to endure, which means there won’t be anyone for him to lean on. Anyone who knows the whole truth, I mean. Unless you’d promise to reach out to him.”

“I would, of course. I would have in any case, but now I can promise you.”

“Don’t try to talk to him about God or heaven. He’d despise that.” How could he explain anyone so complex, so haunted, as Erik in only a few seconds? Charles focused on what Erik would probably do, what he would need most.  “Just be there for him. Tell him that you know the whole truth and let him – rage at the world. Let him rage at you.”

Being a priest meant often allowing the grief-stricken to vent their pain at you, on you, through curse words and tears and even the occasional blow. Charles had endured his share of it; Father Jerome would be a veteran capable of taking even Erik’s considerable wrath.

Charles finished, “Be sure to tell Erik that I asked you to look out for him, all right? Otherwise he’ll find it officious. And it might help him to know that I was – prepared. 

Quietly, Father Jerome said, “You can count on me.” He laid his hands on Charles’ head, the ancient gesture of benediction.  

 

**

 

The last day before he shipped out was the worst. Raven’s façade of cheery denial crumbled, and her face suddenly seemed like that of a woman ten years older. Erik was wound tight, pacing and grumbling, irritated at everything in the world. Both of them seemed convinced that Jean was ailing, but Charles knew how sensitive his daughter was. How aware. She wept constantly and lay about listless not because she was sick, but because she sensed the grief surrounding her.

He simply hoisted Jean into his arms and held her, virtually all day.  It would be long enough before he got the chance again. Charles spent hours trying to memorize everything about her – the curl of her ear, the flush of her cheek, even the scent of her skin.

A tour of duty in Vietnam lasted one year. A third of Jean’s life. When he came home, she would be transformed, and this Jean, the little girl heavy in his arms, would be no more.

But everyone changed. Jean would grow up this year whether he was here to see it or not.

Still, Charles wished he could see it.

Jean fought sleep for more than an hour past her usual bedtime, but finally surrendered to it.  Raven, who would be taking Charles to the train station at dawn, had already turned in.  So he and Erik were alone as they walked along the hall. As they came to the top of the stairs, Erik turned toward their bedroom, but Charles caught his arm. “Go out to the gardens with me, would you?”

“—all right.”

Charles had to smile. “Not one question about why I want to go outside after dark when it’s cold out? You’re humoring me.”

“Just this once.”

“More than this, I think,” Charles said as they went downstairs. “Erik – are you very angry with me?”

“Angry?” Erik looked so stricken that Charles immediately felt guilty for even voicing the thought. “Charles, no.”

“You’re furious. It’s eating at you; I can feel it.”

“You and your insight.” With a sigh, Erik said, “It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s the Army. The war. The thought of losing you.”

_You won’t lose me_ , Charles wanted to say, but didn’t. Neither of them put much stock in platitudes. Instead he confessed what had been worrying him since the day he’d learned his draft status: “I thought you were angry because I refused to go to Canada. Because I wouldn’t dodge the draft.”

“I wish you had. And if you’re reconsidering – it’s not too late.”

“You know I’m not.”

Erik breathed out, less frustrated than resigned. “Yes, I know. Just as I’ve always known you have a strong sense of responsibility. If you didn’t, we’d never have met. I might not agree with you about where that responsibility lies, but – you are who you are.”

“So what you’re saying is that you knew what you were getting into.”

“With you. Not with this war.” Erik paused for a moment, and Charles could feel the weight of fear and hope that bore Erik down. And yet he only hesitated for that instant before putting on his coat and handing Charles a hat.

They walked outside. It was clear weather, at least, despite the cold. Charles gazed up at the stars; he’d missed them when he lived in Manhattan. Already they were dimmer than they had been when he and Raven were children. How many more years before the ever-expanding city lights swallowed the constellations whole?

“This is your church, isn’t it?” Erik said. “Your personal cathedral.”

“Yes.” Of course Erik would have understood about the gardens all along. 

“And so why have you brought the atheist with you to talk to God?” Erik hesitated for one moment. “If you want me to pray with you, I will.”

Charles was shocked – and, briefly, hopeful. “You would?”

“I don’t share your faith, and yet – I love it, because it’s a part of you. And right now I’d plead with anyone or anything for you to come home safely.”

“That’s not what I’ll pray for tonight. I try not to ask God for things – I mean, I do, of course. I’m only human. But mostly I praise Him, and the glory of His works. And I give thanks for all the good things in my life.” Smiling softly, Charles added, “You’re one of the things I thank God for.”

Erik lifted Charles’ hand to his lips and kissed the backs of his knuckles. “I’m hardly an answer to prayer.”

“You don’t even know,” Charles said. The frosty air whipped between them, and for a few moments he could only gaze at Erik. With the moonlight painting his face in the colors of silver and snow, Erik looked almost stark – something hewn out of rock, perhaps, or forged in high heat. So many people would see this face, hear the black side of his temper, and think he was a cold, forbidding man. They would never see the real Erik, the gentle yearning those grey eyes could hold.

Softly, Erik said, “Promise me you’ll come home.”

“Erik – you know I can’t – “

“It’s uncertain, nobody knows the future, yes, I know it all, but promise anyway. Come home to me.”

To hell with superstition. If this was what Erik needed, Charles would provide. “I promise.” 


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s beautiful,” Charles shouted over the roar of the helicopter blades, as he looked out over the verdant jungles of Vietnam. None of the news reports had ever mentioned the splendor of the rolling landscape or the brilliance of the sky. The blade-chopped breeze was warm against his face, and the rivers below gleamed like silver in the sunlight.

The soldier next to him cackled. “We’ll see if you think so a month from now!”

 

**

 

Reality came calling much faster than one month. Charles had been assigned to a company in the Central Highlands, but transport there wouldn’t be available for another week. Until then, he was on “morgue duty." 

This sounded bleak enough, but was in fact yet another euphemism. They had nothing so sophisticated as a morgue. What they had was a hanger, and black rubber body bags, and dead bodies. Hundreds of dead bodies.

Charles had never been so emphatic a pacifist as he was at the moment when he first looked into the hanger – at what had been, two days ago, hundreds of young men who joked and loved and thought – at what was now utter carnage. 

“Plug ‘em up,” said the tired doctor in charge, gesturing with a wad of cotton in a way that made it clear just where the cotton was to go. “Wash ‘em off. Fix up the uniforms best you can, and make sure every guy goes home with his stuff, all right? Not anybody else’s.”

Despite endless, futile blasts of Lysol, the hanger smelled of death – mostly, of shit. Charles did not know whether the dead men had evacuated their bowels in their final terror or upon the body falling slack in death. What he knew was that every single one of them needed to be washed clean of it, every single pair of underwear tossed in a sack to be burnt.

There were other smells too: gunpowder, sweat, smoke, tobacco, and of course the sickly sweetness of decay. They mingled together into what Charles would always think of as the unmistakable scent of tragedy.

How pitiful they all looked, so young and so broken. Some of them were hardly recognizable as human, with limbs or faces blown and burnt away; others were so untouched that it was hard to believe they wouldn’t get up and walk away. This was human fragility at its most stark and undeniable. All Charles could do for them now was prepare them for the last trip home. So he worked all but silently alongside his colleagues – mostly other medics but also a couple of nurses, and one thorough, unshakable clerk who made sure every man was paired with the correct wristwatch or photograph or whatever else he had on him, when it was possible to know. Sometimes it wasn’t.

Charles stitched up mortal wounds, slid intestines back into ripped bellies, wiped blood from slack faces, and even mended rips in uniforms. When his eyes blurred with tears, he quickly blinked them away and went on. He thought about the Pieta, but it provided little consolation.

 

 _A harsh beginning,_ Charles wrote to Erik on the second night. _They were so desperately young. I know the draft starts at 18, yet some of them seemed as though they could have been two or three years under that. But vulnerability can create the illusion of youth._

_In some ways it was harder for me to see the photographs they kept. Death is painful to behold, but the body is in the end an empty shell. The soldiers had endured the worst already. At least I could do them some small service.  But the photographs were of the loved ones back home – a father who will have to know his son died before him, a teenage girl who will never dance with her sweetheart again. I couldn’t help wondering how many of them even knew the horrible truth yet, and what grief waited. One man had a picture of a little girl no older than Jean. I couldn’t look at it long._

 

A letter from Erik arrived the very next day; at first Charles was startled, but then he realized Erik must have mailed it within a day or two of Charles’ departure from New Salem. Their communications would overlap strangely from now on, but it didn’t matter – it was from Erik, and it was his to read and to hold.

Inside was one of Jean’s drawings – a boulder, perhaps? But one with legs? Purple, at any rate – and a single page of Erik’s neat, precise, almost mechanical handwriting:

 

_I am of course supposed to tell you that I’m doing fine. In truth every hour since you walked out the door is harder than the last. I wish you’d let me come to the train station with you – yes, I know, we could hardly have said our goodbyes in public, but it would have been another few moments for us to be together._

_Be warned, Charles. You’ll get no reassuring lies from me. Only honesty. I never gave you any less than that when you were here, and I won’t now that you’re gone. I have to carry on as we did before, believing we’ll never stop. Otherwise I couldn’t bear it. Do you understand?_

_I might take your advice and go to temple this Saturday, but I haven’t decided yet. Jean, as you can see, is now enamored of turtles. Yes. That is a turtle. Possessed by some strange notion of domesticity, Raven tried to cook dinner last night – disastrous. I had to sneak downstairs around midnight and find crackers to stave off the hunger pangs._

_I love you and I miss you and in my sleep I paw at the side of the bed where you should be.  Don’t do anything stupid. Come home to me._

 

It was as though Erik were in the room with him – every word so clearly in his voice. Charles held the page to his chest as though it were a shield.

Then it occurred to him that he couldn’t keep it.

Charles had spent hours convincing Erik that the U.S. military no longer censored letters, that they could write each other honestly. But that meant every letter was now potential evidence. Army barracks were close quarters; he had no real privacy. Yes, he could hide the letters – fold them deep within his things – but when he was out in the field, how would that work? One slip could mean disaster.

No. They couldn’t take the risk.

So Charles read Erik’s letter over and over until he thought he had it memorized. Then he borrowed a nurse’s lighter and burned the paper. He held it by a corner as long as he dared, until his fingers were singed, and then let the last glowing wisps drift down into a trash can.

That night he repeated the letter to himself, and he did seem to remember it all, and yet the feeling wasn’t the same.

 

**

 

“You lucked out,” said Private Catalina, aka Tony, on the day Charles joined his platoon at last. “No KIAs in five months, no serious casualties in four. We’ve thinned the VC out around here. Made it all nice for you.”

The acid tone in his voice didn’t escape Charles, but he didn’t react to it. Already he was vividly aware of the contrast between his own clean uniform and Tony’s dingy garb. He wondered if his boots shone. It couldn’t have been any more obvious that he was untried.  They walked across a ragged site, tents and huts clustered together, to the tune of one soldier’s transistor radio blaring “Land of a Thousand Dances.”

“Stop giving him shit, huh?” Another private shoved Tony, not nearly as hard as Tony shoved back.

“I don’t like objectors,” Tony said. “And I ain’t apologizing for it, either. Tell the truth, Xavier. Did you find Jesus when the lottery shook your birthday out bright and early?”

Charles decided to keep it simple. “I used to be a priest.”

This was apparently startling enough to cut through Tony’s mood. “You’re shittin’ me.” Charles shook his head no. In response, Tony held up the chains around his neck; along with his dog tags he wore a St. Christopher medal. “What do you mean, used to be?”

“Chastity proved to be beyond me.”

The other private, the friendlier one, cracked up laughing. “A man after my own heart! Where you from, Xavier?”

“New York." 

“Me too! The city or upstate?” No true New Yorker admitted there was anything in between.

“Westchester County, but I served at a parish in Manhattan for a few years.”

“Brooklyn here!” He held out his hand for a shake. “Armando Munoz.”

“Charles Xavier.” Charles frowned. “If that’s your name, why do you have DARWIN written across your helmet?”

“Survival of the fittest. Get it? We all write something up there eventually. You’ll see. Come on; we’ll get you settled.”

As they went, Tony stared after them. His expression was no longer the easy scorn it had been when Charles arrived; what had replaced it was far more complicated, and yet not unfamiliar. It was the confusion – and betrayal – that many Catholics felt when confronted with a former priest.

 

_We have bunks – really cots – with about 20 of us to a room. Everyone decorates the area above his bunk with whatever he can scrounge. Most of the soldiers have family photos, often interspersed with a Playboy centerfold. A few of them have advertisements from magazines of cars or trucks they hope to buy when they get home – they are so young. I’ve put up Jean’s drawing of the turtle, though no one else has been able to identify it as such._

_Will you send me a photo? I can scarcely put up one of you alone – but a picture of you, Raven and Jean together would mean the world to me. And more drawings from Jean; tell her I would love to see a sketch of you._

_Tomorrow we go out on patrol for the first time. The Vietcong are supposed to be nearly driven out of this area, but apparently the hills must be swept and searched, regardless._

_It’s still unreal to me that I will be on a military patrol. All of this has seemed like a very strange dream, in some ways. You’ll scoff at that and say I live too much inside my head – to transform my body and train for weeks and go halfway across the world without fully accepting the change. You’d probably be right, too._

_But tomorrow, the dreaming ends._

 

**

 

Charles had always thought getting stronger meant that weights which had once seemed heavy later seemed light. This proved false. The pack still felt exactly like 40 pounds on his back; the difference was that he could now haul it.

They marched through the forest, up and down hills, sweating under their heavy packs and looking for signs of enemy activity. Despite his training, Charles could not guess how they were supposed to see tracks on muddy ground thick with fallen leaves, or glimpse tripwires amid endless vines. Then again, the Vietcong weren’t supposed to be around this area much any longer; maybe he saw nothing because there was nothing to see.

And yet that seemed wrong.

“Let’s sweep down to the ridge,” said Captain Bund, whose helmet read CHOPPER. “We clear that, we head back.”

Catalina nodded and began leading the platoon further down the sloping earth. The trees were less thick on the slope; more sunlight filtered to the ground. By now the whipcord tension with which the soldiers had begun the day had relaxed slightly. Yet Charles could still feel a shadow of that emotion – increasing, spiking sharply –

\--and he could see this slope, this hill, as if from a great height just across the ridge.

“We’re being watched,” he said.

It was the first time he’d spoken all day. Immediately everyone stared at him. Bund snapped, “Got ourselves a bad case of chickenshit.”

“Someone is watching us,” Charles insisted. He felt he could hardly explain his gift to them, but this needed to be said. “From about – there.”

Although he pointed as best he could, neither he nor anyone else could see anything there beyond gently swaying trees. Quietly, Munoz said, “Hey, we all get jumpy out here.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

Catalina huffed, “Moving out.”

The platoon began down the slope, and Charles had no choice but to follow. He kept close to the trees, though, using the shade as best he could and hoping the watcher was only frightened – and that was fear he felt, but not fear alone. There was also determination. Anger. Precision. The outline of one soldier’s body as the only thing that mattered –

Gunfire ripped through the air. One soldier jerked backward; his leg seemed to explode with blood. He went down instantly, shrieking curses.

Charles hit the ground, as did the rest of the platoon. Swearing and guesswork about the location of the sniper filled the air. So did return gunfire. None of that mattered. Someone was hurt; Charles had a job to do.

He slid forward on his belly, using the slope to his advantage. All around him, bullets thudded into the earth so fast that the leaves seemed to be dancing, trembling here and there as if in a strong rain. The roar of gunfire echoed through the valley, in his skull, deafening him to anything else. Yet he could focus on nothing else but the waves of pain rippling out from the wounded man; already the ground around the injured leg had gone muddy with blood.

When Charles reached him, he slung one hand under the wounded man’s arm, then yelled above the din, “You’ve got to help me with your good leg. Push with me, hard as you can.”

Going back up the hill – backwards, towing a man who was almost dead weight, under fire – was hard going.  Charles hung on and went as fast as he could. Still it seemed to take eternity, stones scraping against his gut, sweat slicking his skin, the wounded man writhing in pain.

Yet they got back into the underbrush. Though his hands shook with adrenalin, Charles whipped out a tourniquet, bound the upper thigh and set to work examining the wound –

\--when that pinpoint of determination went out like a snuffed candle.

“Hold fire!” Bund shouted. In the following hush, the only sound was a far-away rustling of branches – and then Charles saw a body drop downward.

“Yeah!” Catalina yelled, and then there was some brief celebration. Charles’ stomach turned over, but he kept at his work.

Bund finally said, “Xavier, how the fucking hell did you know we were being watched?”

“I just knew,” Charles replied, never taking his eyes off his patient. The bleeding had slowed, but the bone might be broken. “We’ll have to carry him down.”

Bund shook his head. “Damn, we got ourselves a medic who can just about smell Charlie Cong.”

A gift from God, Charles could have said. So he had always believed. But his gift had just helped to kill another human being; the platoon had instinctively fired back at the area Charles had pointed out earlier. Otherwise it would have taken them far longer to place the sniper.

If he had helped to kill the sniper, then he had saved other lives in his unit: Charles understood that. But he would never have wanted to help kill anyone.

It was beyond understanding.

As they marched back – unhindered by any further attacks – Catalina said, almost sullenly, “You did good out there.”

Charles didn’t reply. Any mental energy left over from looking after his patient was caught up in the mystery of how his gift might be used to kill, and why God would ever allow it.

That night, he had a letter from Erik.

 

_I prided myself on being so bluntly honest in my letter to you, and then I open yours to find an account of the washing of the dead. It horrified me to think of those killed in Vietnam, how easily you could be one of them. And yet I was glad to know that you would hide nothing from me, not even this._

_One thing I have hidden from you – no, not hidden, but never shared before – was that I helped dispose of the dead at Auschwitz. The bodies had to be taken from the gas chambers to the crematoria. At age 13, I began doing this. We worked so silently, in such shame – the shame of being alive. I would have given much to share with those people the dignity you gave to your fallen soldiers. As it was I could only throw them in heaps to be burned like so much refuse. The work stays with you, always. But I think you already know that._

_For myself – before you ask, yes, I went to temple like a good Yiddishe boy. It had been too long. Some of the members are helping to organize a protest march against the war, so that’s where I will be tomorrow. Raven wants to go as well, but one of us must stay with Jean. Next time, I’ve promised her, she can be the radical and I will be the parent. What’s important is that we continue to speak out – to strike out against this senseless war._

_Spring is in full flower. You should see your gardens now. Even I could call them a cathedral. Jean has decided frogs are much more interesting than turtles, and encloses a picture of one along with her drawing of me. Perhaps you will be able to tell the difference between the two better than I can. She has taken to asking where “Daddy’s thoughts” are, and insists they were always very near her before. I have of course told her that you think of her every day, every hour._

_That is how often I think of you._

_I love you. Come home to me._

 

Charles folded the letter and slipped it into the pocket of his shirt, so it could stay just a few inches from his heart until he burned it later  that night. Then he looked at the pictures emblazoned in brilliant crayon. To him it seemed obvious which one was Erik and which the frog, but maybe others would disagree. He put them both up above his bed.

“Who drew those?” Munoz said companionably. Luckily he had the next bunk over.

“My little girl. Jean. She’s three.”

“Bet she’s cute stuff. Keeping her mom busy.”

Careful, Charles thought. “Jean’s mother died when she was just a year old. Hardly more than a baby.”

“Oh, damn. Sorry to hear it.” His sincerity echoed through Charles – changing him forever from Munoz to Armando, from a fellow soldier to a friend. Even though he was imagining a grief Charles did not feel for a woman he had never known, the intention was pure. “Who’s looking after her while you’re over here?”

“My sister Raven. And Erik. My – best friend." 

“They hitched?” Armando said. “Your sister and your buddy.”

Charles hid his smile. “No, though some people have wondered whether anything’s going on.”

“Time will tell.” With that, Armando turned to the important task of lighting up a Lucky Strike. 

After he’d burned Erik’s letter, as night drew on and the Mamas and the Papas sang “California Dreamin’” from the radio, Charles wrote his reply on ruled notebook paper against his own bent knee. Although he knew how badly the sniper attack would frighten Erik, he also knew he should remain honest.

 

_You’ll say that I didn’t kill the sniper, and I didn’t. But I made his death more certain or at least faster. You’ll say that I was only defending my own life, and that is true. But I can’t shake it, Erik. My gift helped to kill another human being. How can that be possible? I believe that I am allowed to see the souls of others to help them, to guide them, to give them sympathy and understanding they would otherwise be denied. So how could this happen? Even if I had wanted to, it ought to have been impossible. Even in self-defense – my gift wasn’t given to me for my own use, of that I’m sure. Is my gift merely – a talent, an ability, with no purpose? No moral dimension? I turn it over and over in my head, a constant motion that makes me seasick and weary._

_Beyond that – if anything can be said to lie beyond that – Private Ware is likely to make a full recovery, without even a limp. We can expect him back with us, once he’s well. I’m glad to know that I was able to keep my head under fire. And, of course, grateful for my own life in a way I never was before._

_Thank you for telling me about Auschwitz. I know why you never spoke of it – it must be so hard to think of, much less speak of -- but it has helped me to know it now, and to think that, even as I lie here half a world away, we can still grow closer to one another. I hope you no longer feel shame in surviving. You lived to bear witness. They deserved witnesses, to have the truth told._

_Jean’s artwork is above my bed. At night I look up at the picture of you – at least, what I think is the picture of you. It would be awful to learn I was having carnal thoughts about a frog. Tell Raven to write sometime, will you? She’s rotten at letter-writing, but she could at least send a postcard.  I pray for you all. I miss you every hour, and I love you._

 

He made sure to seal the envelope before he went to sleep.

 

**

 

The body of the sniper was found on the next day’s patrol: a young man, hardly more than a boy. He did not wear VC army gear, which led to some speculation that he might have been a sympathizer rather than a soldier.

“We’re over here busting our balls for gooks that don’t even appreciate it,” Catalina said, between chomps on his tobacco.

Charles forced himself to look at that young, slack face and know that he had played a role in his death. And yet he could not think what else he should have done.

At any rate, it was the last enemy action they saw for some weeks.  Patrols – though tense – remained uneventful, and Charles’ days began to take on a dreamlike sameness. The only sign that time was passing was the ever-increasing summer heat and rain; the only punctuation came via letters from Erik.

 

_DAMN it, Charles, I told you not to do anything stupid! Yes, it was heroic. And also stupid. I’d expect no less from you than bravery, but I am coward enough about your life for both of us. Thinking of bullets coming down on either side of your body, the same body I’ve held in my arms – I can hardly stand it. The whole day afterward I paced and snapped, until Raven finally poured me a whiskey and made me watch movies with her on television. My hands are still shaking; I’m sure you can tell by my writing._

_But I have no right to scold. At the peace rally, I – failed to be peaceful. Some of us began throwing things at the police. Nothing truly dangerous. Bits of trash and junk, really. That was enough for the police to turn on us in full force._

_Tear gas is charming stuff. Your eyes swell and your throat burns and snot pours out of you as though someone had turned on a tap. It’s been a few days now and still Raven says I look like death. She exaggerates, of course._

_I can’t get her to write you, incidentally. Maybe she resists because she’s scared, and can’t admit that to you, and doesn’t know what else to say. But she sends her love through me. And we have posed for a photograph – several, in fact – so as soon as the film comes back from the developers, I’ll send along the picture you wanted._

_Jean sends this drawing of a fish, which is startlingly recognizable. She also says she’s saving her thoughts up for you when you come back – as if they were flowers she’s pressing in a book. Honestly I don’t know what gets into her head._

_As for your gift – I’ve paused here for the better part of an hour. Every time my pen touches the paper, I think better of what I was going to say. I don’t yet know how to answer you. All I can say is that I trust you to do the right thing._

_When I wake, my bed is too empty. At work I look up and expect to see you a dozen times a day. By nightfall my body hurts for you in vain. I love you. Come home to me._

 

Their patrols became shorter. The soldiers had more freedom to go into the neighboring town – which meant Charles soon had to begin dispensing penicillin. Lots of penicillin.

 

_I never thought I’d spent most of my time abroad tending to only one part of the male body – definitely not that part. And yet they told us in training that this one of the most common issues all Army medical teams have to deal with, as it has been in virtually every military force throughout all of time. Still, I had to see it to believe it. I’ve come halfway around the world primarily to combat gonorrhea. _

 

Before long, Charles was freed up to go on medcap missions to neighboring villages. There he and a few other medics and nurses got to do a few basic things: treating eye infections, dispensing diarrhea medication, and the like. Once he was even allowed to help deliver a baby, a scrawny little boy whose terror and wonder at first beholding the world pierced Charles like an arrow of pure light. People wanted to trust him, but always flickering in the backs of their minds were horrible stories – horrible memories – of things other soldiers had done. Sometimes these soldiers were Vietcong, but too often they were Americans who’d worn the same uniform Charles had on now.

Back at the barracks, he would look from man to man and wonder who among them had the capacity to commit some of the atrocities Charles had witnessed in the minds of others. Armando he knew did not. Bund – he could, and he had; flickers of the incident that had earned him the nickname “Chopper” twisted into Charles’ mind like needles of shattered glass. The fact that Bund was not inherently cruel made this all the worse. But most around Charles were, like Tony Catalina, a mystery.

Sin was inevitable: Charles knew this. But vanity, lust, envy – those were natural impulses, most of them born of healthy needs that had been allowed to become dominant. The desire to brutalize other human beings wasn’t natural.

Was it?

 

_Here you go, Charles – one photograph of the three people living in your house and waiting for you to come home. Jean insisted on wearing her finest party dress, so Raven and I thought we’d put on our best as well. So it looks as though we were headed out to 21, when in fact we were enjoying yet another night in. Even Raven has turned into a homebody now. Who would have thought it?_

 

“That’s your _sister_?” Armando said when Charles tacked up the picture.

Charles looked at it with fresh eyes. There, right between Jean grinning madly at the camera and Erik dashing in a dinner suit, stood Raven in a white dress that hugged every curve, her hair twisted into an elegant chignon. Her face appeared so womanly and glamorous that she might have been a movie starlet. “Yes. Why do you say it like that?”

“Um, no reason. No reason at all.” Armando hurriedly turned back to his own bunk. “Nice-looking girl. Healthy.”

“Armando!”

“Forget I mentioned it!”

 

_Stars & Stripes informs us the war is going swimmingly; I know better than to trust it, and yet it’s all too easy to fall into a sense of complacency here. The fighting is, for the most part, far away. My medical duties aren’t so different from those of the average country doctor (though I hope country doctors see less venereal disease.) The heat pounds down as mercilessly as the rain, and yet the very fact that those count as significant troubles says a lot. I’ve been fortunate so far._

_Fortunate enough that I have time left over to worry about you, Erik. In your last letter you made light of it, but this is the third time you’ve been hurt at a protest. Yes, it’s important to speak out, but must you always be on the very front line, amid the very angriest protestors? You’ll say it’s the mirror image of my decision to come here – morality, honor, responsibility, and that I understand – but you took me to task for it, and I’ll do the same. You have Jean to think of, you know. What happens if you’re arrested or, God forbid, deported? I think you’re in more physical danger than I am. Tonight I look over at your photograph and try to imagine you with a blackened eye; I can’t. Please, please, restrain yourself – just enough to stay in one piece and out of jail, all right?_

_If I were there I’d kiss the bruise, and hold your aching head against my chest. I’d lift the cup of cool water to your lips. I’d sing you to sleep._

 

Latrine duty: One of the Army’s countless joys. Greater peace had not brought about any improvement in their primitive plumbing arrangements. The toilets were essentially outhouses with pails that required emptying.

“Don’t slop it over the side, or I swear, I’ll trip you into the bucket myself,” Tony muttered as they dragged one pail out. 

“I’m doing my best.” Charles was trying to breathe through his teeth, the better to avoid the smell.

“There you go again. Acting like I didn’t say nothing to you. Don’t you ever get angry? Ever? It’s not human, the way you act.” 

This was something that disturbed Erik at times, too. With Erik, Charles had finally become comfortable with expressing his anger – at least, occasionally – but only after years of intimacy. That side of him had no voice here. “It takes more than that to make me lose my temper.”

“What does it take, then?” Tony looked like he wanted to find out. But his next words sliced deeper than even he could have guessed: “It’s like you’re pretending you’re still a priest. Why did you want to pretend to be a priest more than you wanted to actually be one?”

The old loss echoed within Charles, louder and deeper than he’d heard it in years. For one moment he remembered standing at the altar, feeling the love of his congregation and sensing his purpose in life with a perfect, sustaining clarity.

“Let’s just get this done,” Charles said, and he kept dragging the pail.

 

_I’ve thought about this for a long time, Charles – three months now – so you probably believed I would never speak of it. But I’ve wondered about what happened that day with the sniper, what you sensed and what happened because of it, nearly as much as you have._

_What startled me the most was realizing how deeply I have come to believe in your gift to see within other human beings’ souls. You say it is a gift from God. I don’t believe in God. And yet I believe in what you say he has given you._

_Is that faith, Charles? I think I – believe in your belief. Which is not the same as believing. And yet it is not where I began._

_All I know is that your faith is more beautiful to me than any God described in any testament. Your gift must have a moral dimension, because it is a part of you; it is your conviction, your belief, that turns your ability from a mere trick to something with meaning. And you are one of the very few people I would ever trust to have such a gift. In this, at least, let my faith sustain you as yours sustains me._

_Enclosed is Jean’s latest, which she says is Batman dancing on a rainbow. Raven tried cooking again, and the results were much improved. I suspect she took a class without telling me. That’s the only explanation for how we went from inedible slop to chicken a la king. Still she balks at writing you, though now I think it’s only because I nag her. She hates to be nagged, you know. So I’ll fall silent and see if that does the trick._

_Halfway through summer, now. I tell myself that I have to endure just one of each season without you. But summer heat always reminds me of the first time we kissed, the first night we made love. I remember licking the sweat from your virgin skin. I love you. Come home to me._

 

“Dammit!” Armando yelled, in mock outrage. “Again?”

“I believe that’s – -twentytwo dollars and seventy five cents you owe me.” Charles notched his latest win in the notebook currently serving as poker tally.

Armando groaned as he tossed his cards down onto the flat rock that was serving as a poker table while they made night camp on the hillside. “Okay, you always know when I’m bluffing. Help a man out and let me know – what’s my tell?”

Charles shrugged. He didn’t think this had anything to do with his gift; at least, he hoped not. But possibly living with the ability to look into men’s souls had shown him more signs of deception than most people ever learned to see. 

“You’ve nearly wiped me out,” Bund said; he’d had to fold a little while before. “But give a man a chance to win some of his own back, huh?”

In moments like these – when the day’s march had been tiring but not punishing, and the soldiers on guard expected no danger, and the profanity surrounding him was good-natured and comradely – Charles almost enjoyed the Army.

Only now did he realize that, down deep, he’d always questioned whether he could handle anything like this. He knew himself to have led a very sheltered life in many ways – if not as sheltered as Erik often assumed, certainly far from rugged. Always Charles had wondered what he would do if he were not cloistered either by his wealth or the Church, how he would handle the rougher side of life.

Well, this might not have been the worst war duty any man had ever drawn, but it was tougher and more demanding than anything else he’d experienced. Charles found himself almost exhilarated to know he could take it.

“Count me in too,” Tony said, lighting up another cigarette. “Whose turn is it to deal?”

“Mine.” Charles cut the deck. “Jokers wild.”

 

**

 

The night they returned to camp, as he lay in his bunk, Charles tried to pray – but it was difficult. Although he’d finally gotten used to the semipublic masturbation that happened every single evening, right now it seemed as though nearly the entire platoon was at it simultaneously. Groans and grunts and slaps – sounds that reminded him of Erik –

Charles grabbed his notebook and a pen. If he was thinking of Erik, then he could write to him. But it was so hard to turn his mind to anything but sex when the air even smelled of it.

Though of course he could –

His eyes widened as the thought took shape. Lots of soldiers wrote letters like this, and got them from girls back home, too. Charles had never even dreamed of it. Of course Erik had proved to be the master of saying everything with few words – he’d turned Charles’ memories into fevered daydreams by mentioning that first night and licking his skin. 

But maybe it was worth a try. After all, if he was being honest about his thoughts, sex was what he was thinking about.

So Charles began.

_I want you to read this letter alone, in our room, preferably at night before you go to bed. Right now I’m imagining you there, stretched out across the mattress in your shorts. The rest of you is bare to me._

_Because in my imagination, I’m there with you._

 

Well, that would do for a beginning. Charles swallowed hard and let his mind take a few turns.

 

_If I were there, I’d crawl across the bed until I covered you with my body. I’d kiss you – gently at first, then harder, until you opened your lips. How I miss your tongue in my mouth, Erik. Your hands on my body. I’d slowly tug your shorts down so you would lie naked against me._

_Then I’d work my way along your body, kissing every inch, until my face was buried between your legs. I’d take your –_

 

Charles paused. He didn’t actually _talk_ about this much.  What noun to use? He’d heard far more obscenities in the past few months with his platoon than ever before in his life, but the one they used the most – “prick” – sounded all wrong to him. A prick sounded like something small. Definitely not the word to use for Erik.

 

_\--your cock into my mouth and suck long and deep until I heard you groan. Maybe you’d beg me to let you finish, but I wouldn’t just yet. You’d be writhing under me. I can imagine the way you’d move._

_Once you were breathing fast and almost beside yourself, I’d push my fingers inside you to get you ready. I’d be so hard for you by then – I’m hard right now, writing this, so hard it hurts. And then, when neither of us could stand to wait one second longer …_

 

He was torn between needing to climax and wanting to laugh hysterically. My God, here he was, an adult man, and for the first time in his entire life, he was writing this word down, staring in disbelief as the letters f-u-c-k took shape under his pen.

 

_… I’d fuck you. I’d start so slow, Erik, so slow that you’d say it felt like burning. But you’d pump your hips like you always do, coaxing me on until I moved faster. I’d wrap one hand around your cock, and before long we’d both be shouting out. I’d feel you come in my palm. I’d come inside you, and then we’d collapse into each other’s arms._

_Oh, Erik, I miss you, all of you, not just your body but your body too, not just the sex, but definitely the sex! I never wrote a dirty letter before. It’s dark in the barracks, but I’m sure my face is blazing red. I hope I used the right words._

_And the most embarrassing thing – but the most important – when I’m done with this, I’m going to –_

 

Charles bit his lower lip.

 

_\--touch myself, and I want you to do the same. If we share this same fantasy – it’s as close as I can get to making love to you, you see? At least until I get home._

_When we’re together again, I’ll make this come true a hundred times over. You’ll see. I love you so much._

_  
_

Even in the dark, Charles found an envelope and sealed this one immediately. He hoped he’d have the courage to actually mail it tomorrow. 

For now –

Sound cloaked by the groaning and snoring already thick in the room, Charles gripped himself, thought of Erik and squeezed tightly; he was already so aroused just by writing the letter than it took hardly more than that.

He slept incredibly well.

 

**

 

“Say it again,” Armando said as they headed uphill on yet another patrol.

After readjusting his medical pack, Charles repeated, “ _Illegitimis non carborundum est_.”

Like most of the other soldiers, Tony was grinning. “And that for honest real means – ”

“More or less, ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down.’”

Everybody laughed, and Armando even clapped his hands together. “Who knew they could say that in Latin? Back in the day?”

“It’s actually World War II lingo – British soldiers, schoolboy Latin,” Charles said.  “But I think the sentiment is universal to all soldiers, everywhere, anytime.”

Sweat seemed to have glued his pack to his shirt, which in turn was plastered to his flesh. He’d soaked a bandana in cool water and tied it around his forehead to ease the oven-like effect of the helmet, but that had worn off long ago. Now it just kept a little of the sweat from trickling down onto his face. The Army regulation requiring socks under boots now seemed like a form of sadistic torture. Heat surrounded him, suffocated him. And moisture was so thick in the air that they seemed to be marching through a sauna. The light that filtered through the thick foliage overhead was misty and soft.

“So you speak Latin,” Armando ticked one finger. “French, because you were the only one who could talk to that hot girl in the village –”

“About her grandmother’s arthritis!” Nobody seemed to believe his protests.

“—and what else?”

“German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Well, sort of Portuguese.” Charles could also get by reasonably well in Dutch but decided it didn’t bear mentioning.

 Tony just laughed. “All those languages, and you couldn’t figure out how to tell the U.S. Army to take a hike in any of ‘em!”

“Plus a priest, and halfway a doctor.” Armando held out his hand. “Give me your helmet, huh?”

Charles handed it over easily enough. Bund was actually allowing them to take a break, even though they’d hardly been at the march for three hours. Their extended peace had turned these patrols into hardly more than woodland camping trips, albeit scorching hot ones.

For a few moments, Armando worked with his pen, then handed the helmet back. “About time you got something up there.”

He stared down to see that his helmet now read, in huge black letters, PROFESSOR X. “It’ll do,” Charles laughed.

Bund suddenly held out one hand. Everyone stared at him, slowly coming back to alertness. Charles felt the tension ripple around them, and he looked down to see what Bund had seen – a tripwire. A booby trap. It looked hardly different from the countless vines that wound around tree trunks and rocks all around them. If Bund hadn’t found it just then, or if they had stopped for their break two minutes later, someone would have tripped it, and they’d have been blown to pieces. 

“Don’t mean it’s new,” Tony said.

“We’ve been by here nearly once a week every week for the past three months,” Private Jefferson replied. “No way we missed it every time.”

Charles knew – as he always did – that they were not being watched at that moment. But also knew the days when that could be true were likely drawing to an end. The war was returning for them, soon.

 

**

 

Although the rest of patrol was fraught with suspense, soldiers jumping at every single snapped twig, they found nothing and nobody else. Armando kept vomiting, which led Bund to ridicule him as chickenshit. But by the time they returned to the barracks the next evening, it was clear that Armando was actually ill. It didn’t seem to be anything worse than an ordinary bug, but still, it was important to keep him hydrated. What with one thing and another, it was a solid hour before Charles realized mail had been placed on his bunk.

As Armando forced down an ORT packet dissolved in water, Charles eagerly took up his letter from Erik. The envelope was uncommonly thin; inside was only one sheet of paper, and that not even full. Yet Charles smiled as he read it.

_Not a true letter – a better one will be in the mail soon, I swear – but I wanted to let you know your last and most passionate missive was received. You used all the right words, and your instructions were enthusiastically followed! Today I can’t stop smiling. It’s as if you had spent the night in my bed – well, not that good. But the next best thing._

_You’ll never cease to surprise or delight me. And I hope to write you a similar letter very soon._

_I can’t wait to make love to you again, for real. Come home to me._

 

Quickly Charles folded the letter – then realized another piece of mail had been beneath it. It was a postcard of Coney Island, the rollercoaster bright red against a pale blue sky, and as he turned it over, he grinned as he recognized Raven’s scrawled handwriting.

 

_Sorry it’s taken me so long to write. You know I’m awful at it. Erik took me and Jean here, all three of us, and we rode the Ferris Wheel together – I thought you should know. I think of you every day; I really do. We both try to keep you in our thoughts always, no matter what. Please come home safe, and soon._

_  
_

Charles read it, then read it again. It wasn’t any worse than any of Raven’s other infrequent letters and postcards throughout the years; in fact, it was wordier than most. And yet something about it struck him as – peculiar.

Nervous.

Almost apologetic.

What would Raven have to apologize for?

Charles read it one more time, envisioning the scene – Erik and Raven on the Ferris Wheel, Jean just a pipsqueak between them, soaring up toward the heavens side by side – as he glanced over at the photograph above his bed.

Every other time he’d looked at the photograph, he’d only cherished their smiling faces. Now he observed their bodies. The way Raven leaned slightly against Erik’s shoulder, the way his hand was wrapped around her waist. If you cropped Jean from the photograph, anyone would assume it was a picture of an attractive, affectionate romantic couple.

_We both try to keep you in our thoughts always, no matter what._

No matter what. No matter what? 

It wasn’t possible. There was no way, ever, that Erik could write the letter Charles had just read, or any of the others, if he were – Charles’ mind stumbled over the thought – being unfaithful. 

And yet his letters had mentioned Raven more and more often, more warmly – cooking meals, sharing movies – Erik understood her better than he ever had before – they were raising a child together – and Charles now knew beyond any doubt that the idea of them as a couple, as lovers, was already in Raven’s mind.

She didn’t want it to be; she hated herself for it. Every single line of her postcard told Charles that. But it was there.

Probably Erik had no idea of it … yet.

But Charles had six more months to serve in Vietnam. The only physical pleasure he could give Erik was via air mail. Meanwhile, Erik would continue dining and laughing and parenting and living with Raven. Charles was indifferent to women’s bodies, but he knew that Erik was not. Raven was stunning by any measure. And they were so much alike, really more alike than Erik and Charles had ever been.  The townspeople in New Salem had seen the potential; even Armando had sensed it.

He wanted so badly to think it was impossible. Yet his words to the draft board came back to haunt him: _Sin is inevitable. That’s part of what it means to be human._ His sister and his lover were only human, after all – lonely, isolated, craving affection and warmth and sex –

Charles’ mind still protested: _Erik wouldn’t. He wouldn’t._

He’d never cheat, no. He’d never mean to get even emotionally involved with Raven. And yet he and Charles had fallen in love against their mutual wishes, trying to deny it almost until the moment they had first kissed. Months of cooperation and friendship had brought their love into being; they couldn’t have stopped it, because God knew they had tried.

If it had happened before, it could happen again. 

As Charles sat there numbly holding the postcard, Tony stuck his head into the barracks, “Some of us are headed down into town tonight. You up for it, Munoz?”

Armando responded by once more vomiting in the bucket.

“That there’s a no,” Tony said good-naturedly. “What about it, Professor? You ever gonna stop hiding in here writing letters and finally have some fun? Maybe a priest can’t have real fun, but shit, you could have a beer.”

“Ex-priest,” Charles said, the words as unthinking as a parrot’s.

“Why don’t you go on?” Armando collapsed back onto his bunk. “Relax for once.”

“I should stay with you." 

“What else are you going to tell me? Keep drinking this sugar-salt crap, keep aiming for the bucket?”

Charles paused. “Basically, yes.”

“Don’t worry about me, Professor. Me, I survive.” Armando’s face contorted in a grimace, as though his stomach were challenging his bravado. “You really want to sit here watching me puke for the rest of the evening?”

Although Charles would rather have stayed with his patient, he now knew he’d be able to think of nothing else but Raven and Erik all night – unless, maybe, he could somehow manage to distract himself. “Okay. I’ll come." 

Tony laughed out loud. “Holy shit, we got ourselves a miracle!”

But that night in town provided no comfort. The one bar – a place with corrugated metal walls and clapboard roof – was nearly as much a brothel. Charles drank a beer, then another, then another, all the while attempting to kindly discourage half-naked young girls. The beer quieted neither his doubts nor the tumult he sensed around him.

The souls in here … surely it was like this in purgatory.

Some of them reveled in the atmosphere: Bund, certainly, who kept pouring liquor on the girls’ breasts and sucking it off again. Many of the other men. Even several of the prostitutes were happy, the ones who were paired with young, handsome soldiers, or at least ones who seemed likely to pay well. But that feverish delight was tangled in the machinery of other minds – the cold, endless calculation of who would do what for how much. And there was sadness there beneath it all, the cold gelatinous bottom of this mess: new girls who didn’t want to sell their bodies, guys scared of getting the clap but unwilling to back down in front of their pals, and the steady rocking nausea of those who had drunk too much.

 _Wait,_ Charles thought blurrily. _That might just be me._

Well into a bottle of gin, Bund began yelling, “I need it! And I want it right now!” He staggered back before seating himself deliberately on the floor, then lying out almost as if spread-eagled. “You hear me? I want it right now! _Right now_!”

One of the women straddled him, then lowered herself onto her knees so that Bund’s face was buried in her crotch. Bund went to work, amid cheers.

That did it. Charles pushed himself up from the table. “I need some fresh air,” he said to nobody in particular. No wonder they wouldn’t notice him going.

As he made his way down the rickety steps, one of the proprietors – an older woman with Western-style cosmetics and a deep purple dress – took his arm. “You don’t need this, hm? All these girls.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Here, here. I know what you need.” She wheeled him around so that he stumbled through a side door, into one of the bedrooms. “I always know. This is right, isn’t it?”

Charles stared at the prostitute waiting for him naked on the bed – a boy who could be no more than eight years old.

“No,” he said.

“No? You’re sure?”

“I am absolutely sure.” His voice shook with anger. “That is a child." 

“Very pretty – ”

“That is a child, and you should get him dressed and out of this place this instant!” Charles had never shouted at anyone like this, not ever in his life, but he roared at the madam now. “What’s wrong with you? Have you no decency? How can you do this to a little boy?”

The child began to cry, and the madam shooed Charles from the room. “Fine, you don’t want him. Get out.”

“You can’t leave him here. You have to take him home.” Yet Charles felt something within his chest cave in as he realized … this was the child’s home. And the madam – his grandmother – was cradling him close, willfully blind to the harm of her actions, only aware that this foreigner was scaring her grandson.

I could have her arrested, Charles thought wildly, but he had no idea how to do that. The local authorities were downstairs with the girls and unlikely to turn on their hostess. For one wild moment, he imagined burning the damned place down –

\--perhaps it was as close to truly understanding Erik as he ever came—

\--but it was useless. He was useless. Charles had seen true evil and couldn’t do one single thing to stop it. Once again he remembered the body of the sniper from that first patrol falling from the tree, dead weight.

So he staggered out, down the stairs and out into the street. Charles made it was far as the nearest ditch before vomiting.

He’d never felt so powerless. So far from God. Weakly he clung to a signpost as he threw up again, and again.

“Uhoh.” It was Tony, standing halfway behind him. “Didn’t think you drank that much.”

“Me either.” He’d had too much, to be sure, but this – this was more likely whatever had felled Armando. “I think I’m sick.”

“Scene in there would make anybody sick,” Tony said. “I ain’t saying I’m above spending time with the ladies, but hell, you’ve got to draw a line somewhere, don’t you? And even if you couldn’t hack it as a priest, well, I guess you never got mixed up in nothing like that before.”

“No. Never.”

“ _Hope_ not, anyway. Or maybe that’s why they tossed you out.”  

“Tony, I left of my own free will.”

“I don’t buy it.” Tony’s round face looked surprisingly harsh in the dim light. “You don’t give your life to serving the church and then just quit to get with some girls. That’s a sacred promise. You don’t just take back a sacred promise!" 

Charles had tried to be understanding about this, had ignored the accusing looks Tony gave him every time either of them took out the rosary, but now he was out of patience. “You’re better taking it back than breaking it. The church was sacred enough to me for me to leave when I needed to. Would you rather I was a hypocrite? Would you rather I lied? Is that where you’d ‘draw the line,’ Tony? You’d like a priest who says one thing and does another? You don’t need me for that. There are plenty of those left in the Catholic Church to go around.”

For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Tony’s reply, when it came, was only, “You’re turning green.”

Charles’ gut turned over, and he vomited so hard that he doubled over and fell to his knees.

When he could stop retching, Tony gently took one of Charles’ arms around his shoulder. “That ain’t beer making you sick. That’s whatever Armando’s got.”

Tony managed to maneuver them both to a jeep and back to the barracks, where Charles could drink the same concoction Armando had and doze fitfully by his side. The next morning, neither of the patients were fit for patrol, and they lay there for long hours in the shimmering heat, wordless. Charles just kept staring at the photo of Erik and Raven.

He could hardly see Jean in it. Already his mind had been twisted that badly.

But at the very hottest hour of the day, when Charles felt as though he might just dissolve into a pool of misery and sweat, he finally thought, _You have to have faith._

That was what it came down to: faith. All his life he’d cultivated his faith in God, and even now, at his lowest, that faith remained with him. Was he incapable of having that kind of faith in his fellow human beings? Could he know that the madam both sold her grandson and loved him? That was hard to understand, and he would never condone it, but he had to accept that it was real – a paradox, but real. 

More difficult by far – could he accept that people he loved as much as Erik and Raven were human and fallible and therefore capable of letting him down, and yet believe that they would not, out of their goodness and their love for him?

If he loved them, he had to believe in them. Faith demanded no less.

Charles looked at the photo again, took a deep breath, told himself to relax, and let the breath out in a sigh. Then he drank some more water and started a long-overdue letter to Father Jerome.

 

**

 

Patrols had grown shorter in recent months, but now that VC activity had picked up in the region, that changed. Charles’ first patrol after his illness lasted for six days; he had to again get used to sleeping sitting up, propped between the medical pack and a tree, while rain pattered down on his helmet. This troubled him less than the increasing signs that the U.S. stronghold on this valley would not go unchallenged much longer.

People in the villages no longer met their eyes. More tripwires snaked between the vines. And Charles began to sense – something. Minds still distant, but near, and growing nearer.

He kept this – and the theological questions it raised for him – to himself. Bund didn’t need his input to tell that the Vietcong were preparing to move.

When they came in, after a hurried meal and a 60-second shower that felt like the luxuries of the Ritz, Charles found that he had one letter waiting from Erik.

 

_It would be easy to tell you that I’ve pulled back from the antiwar movement, and not to tell you why. You’d be so relieved if I left it at that. As it is – well, judge for yourself._

_I was at a protest in Washington Square Park, where several men burned their draft cards. As usual, they were surrounded by catcallers – but that day, those people who could not abide another person’s protest went one step further. They began to chant, “Burn yourselves instead.”_

_It enraged me. I walked up to the ringleader and asked him if he knew what burning human flesh smells like. He did not. Then I showed him my tattoo, informed him that I would remember that smell forever, and told him that if he had any idea what he was saying, he’d shut the hell up._

_Strangely no one had a response to that. They wandered off._

_So I was the hero of the hour. An appropriate phrase. You see, an hour is all it lasted. Afterward, a group of us were planning what to do next, and one young man – see how already I call him a boy? Yesterday he was my peer – began ranting about the soldiers carrying out the killing. I told him there were good men gone to war against their will; he should have known that, given how many people from his school and hometown must have gone. And yet it meant nothing to him. He insisted that any “cooperation” with the Army was collaboration with imperialism. That any U.S. soldier in Vietnam was equally responsible for any atrocity committed there. I told him my “best friend” was in Vietnam, and he said in that case my best friend was either a coward or a murderer._

_The best I can say about the minutes that followed is that I was not arrested. While my knuckles are stiff and bruised, I didn’t actually break my hand on his face._

_Now I am no longer welcome. Obviously the protests against the Vietnam War are larger than the groups Raven and I were a part of – there are other ways for me to speak out – but I find myself strangely at sea. My anger at your fate has nowhere to go, nothing to do. I pace the floors. Jean says my “thoughts are all smoky,” which sounds about right. Raven sometimes manages to calm me down, coax me into a relaxed hour of wine and conversation, but that never lasts long._

_This letter is what I did with that energy – at least, for today. I apologize for the lack of promised fantasy material; right now I don’t think I could create a sexual scenario worthy of you. But give me time. You always inspire me, in that way and so many others. I love you, Charles. Come home to me._

_  
_

Charles struggled all night to compose a response. At this point he hadn’t written Erik for almost two weeks, and he had much to say about Erik’s altercations at the protest – but the problem was that this wasn’t enough.

Honesty had guided them throughout all this time apart. But being honest with Erik right now meant being honest about his moment of doubt, and his suspicions about Raven’s feelings.

Yet how could he write such a thing without it sounding like an accusation?

Or – worse – without making Erik conscious of what Charles felt sure was mostly an unconscious bond between them, and stirring up what might otherwise have lain dormant – “a relaxed hour of wine and conversation” –

 _Faith_ , he reminded himself. If he told the truth to Erik, they’d be all right. He had enough faith in Erik to feel sure of that.

Still, finding the right words eluded him. Finally he decided to let it lie another few days. Charles decided he’d write Erik when he returned from the next patrol.

 

**

 

The rain began early on the second day. Charles shrugged on the heavy poncho and kept moving, hoping the platoon would make the top of the mountain before nightfall. Better to sleep with the water running away from you. Mud squished beneath his boots, and the others took turns cursing because their cigarettes wouldn’t stay lit.

In the last hours of daylight – such light as the gray wet sky allowed – Bund said, “Start looking for a good position.” The newer soldiers sighed in relief that the day’s marching was at an end; the veterans, who now included Charles, knew they were in for a soggy night.

And yet someone was in a good mood. Not just relieved. Almost elated.

Several someones.

And there was fear to go with it – the inevitable fear of war, with the high feverish mania that preceded the willingness to kill –

Charles looked into the jungle around them. Amid the rain-lashed trees and the deepening twilight, he could see nothing. It was hard terrain to fight on, and yet it was perfect cover.

“Captain Bund?” he said.

As the name left his lips, the air erupted in gunfire.

“Son of a bitch!” Armando shouted. All around Charles, soldiers hit the ground and grabbed their rifles. He took what cover he could behind a small rise in the earth and struggled to get the medical supplies ready. They’d take casualties tonight.

Many of them.

Because Charles’ gift had already told him what the rest of his platoon would soon discover: They were surrounded. 


	3. Chapter 3

Despite clear church dogma, Charles had never, even as a priest, been wholly sure about hell. He did not doubt that sins were punished, but without the potential for redemption, what purpose did punishment serve? Were hell merely vindictive, then its purpose was devoid of virtue. If hell had no virtue, how could it serve as a just punishment for anyone? Its existence would become in effect a greater sin than any it sought to avenge. 

Instead, Charles had thought that perhaps in death all people felt what they had caused their fellow human beings to feel. They would know all the love of their family and friends – and also the pain of those they had wounded, completely and deeply, suffering it in full. Even the worst lives would have caused some joy, and even the best some sorrow. But still, those who had cherished grace, who had been kind and helped others, would experience a joyous reward. And he could think of few better fates for Adolf Hitler than to have to know the horror of his own concentration camps, his own gas chambers, six million times over.

Now, though, Charles believed that hell could come into being on earth, and he was there.

A scream split the air, above all the gunfire, and Charles crawled toward the sound. For six days now, they had been under siege. Three men had been killed. As of now, they had five wounded. They were low on ammunition; the food had run out last night. The rain had never stopped.

Bullets slammed into the trees directly behind Charles, and he flattened himself in the mud deep enough that he had to turn his head to breathe. The medical pack felt as though it would drown him. But as soon as that burst of fire passed, Charles pushed himself up and crawled toward the latest casualty – and saw who had been hit.

“Tony!” he shouted as he skidded toward Private Catalina. Tony’s limbs contorted, his face twisted, as though he were being shaken by some unseen predator. Charles’ stomach turned over as he saw Tony’s midsection – blown open, viscera exposed.

They’d taught him in basic training that gut wounds were nearly always fatal.

“Hang on, Tony.” Charles tried to staunch the bleeding as best he could, but already he knew that Tony needed a hospital immediately if he were going to make it. And right now, it looked like none of them were going to get off this hill anytime soon, if ever. 

Even as he worked, he composed a letter to Erik in his head. Why hadn’t he written Erik one more note? It killed Charles to think that he might have told Erik he loved him again, but had let jealousy and doubt rob them both. Even just writing those three words would’ve been enough. The only thing that dulled his regret was imagining what he would write now if he could:

 

_War is evil. Not as an action, a thing we do – not only as that, I mean, because we bear responsibility. But I think what we call war is also a way evil makes itself manifest in the world. It’s a beast, a living malevolent thing, that twists up people and nations and souls. I believe that a just war is possible but I also know that this isn’t it. The men trying to kill us, the men we’re trying to kill – they are just as sure of their righteousness as we are of ours. They are as frightened as we are, or they were, until we began losing so badly. We are all lovers and friends and sons to people we long to see again, people capable of goodness, and we are ripping each other’s bodies apart, cracking ribs, shredding faces. We are like animals. We are like monsters. War summons this evil within us. Justifies it. War is evil that uses our virtue to deform the world._

_That’s what you were trying to tell me that first night, when you said you didn’t want me to know what war was. Now I understand._

 

**

 

The gunfire fell into a lull after dark. This was meaningless – the assault could begin again at any moment, as they all knew by now. But it gave Charles time to check on his patients.

They’d dragged the dead with them as long as they could, but had to abandon them. Someone would return for their bodies later, if it was possible. For now, Charles could only try to avoid adding to their number.

“I’m running out of supplies,” he said to Bund.

“No shit,” Bund replied. His face was mud streaked with rain. “Join the club.”

“Just reporting as per regulations.” Charles gestured toward the mobile comm unit. “Any luck?” 

“They keep saying they can’t send air support yet. When the fuck we’re gonna get some air support – your guess is as good as mine. Fact is, we’re screwed.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said, and went back to work.

Two of the wounded were likely to be fine. Van Horne’s right ear had been mostly shot away, and his hearing there was still minimal, but the wound was clean and he could move. Gonzalez had taken a flesh wound to the forearm, and possibly the bone was cracked; it was no worse than that.

But Turner was almost certain to lose his leg beneath the knee. It was shattered. In hot, wet, filthy conditions like this, the infection he already suffered was only going to get worse. Charles dreaded the prospect of a battlefield amputation nearly as much as Turner must, but within another day or so, it would have to be done. And Mielczarek’s throat wound had miraculously missed any of the major arteries or veins, but his fever was spiking and his damaged larynx had begun oozing pus.

“What about Tony?” Armando whispered. He’d been sitting with Tony, waiting for Charles to return to their side.

Charles simply shook his head.

Tony’s skin was waxy, his eyes unfocused. Three times now, Charles had managed to perform rough field surgery and sew up the vein bleeding most profusely; twice, the stitches hadn’t held. If it tore again, there were no more supplies to repair it. Probably there was still more internal bleeding that Charles couldn’t get to.  

Besides, it was a gut wound. Serious infection was almost certain, particularly in conditions like these, where Charles had been unable to clean himself or the wound before working on Tony. That probably meant sepsis – hard enough to handle in a conventional hospital, almost impossible in Vietnam. Bleeding to death would be a more merciful end than one that came after weeks or months of raging infection attacking every organ and system of the body in turn.

Yet he’d fought to give Tony whatever chance he could have – fought and failed.

Rain beat down on them, drumming on Charles’ helmet. As he brushed some of the wetness from Tony’s face, Tony stirred and seemed to know where he was more than he had before.

Even that small motion had been a mistake. The bloodstains around Tony’s hand on his belly darkened again and spread further. Armando swore beneath his breath. Charles looked at his medical pack – now empty – and felt more helpless than he ever had.

Tony whispered, “Am I going to die?”

Charles put one hand on the side of Tony’s throat; the pulse was weak and irregular. He said only, “Do you feel that you are?”

“Yeah.” Tony gasped for breath. “Do you still pray?”

“Yes. I still believe.” He leaned over Tony and said, “You know that I was a priest. Once you’re ordained as a priest, in some ways you remain a priest forever. If you want – I can still give the final sacraments. The church allows it.” 

Tony managed to nod. “Please.”

“Can you say the Apostle’s Creed, Tony?”

“I – I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth – ”

He could not consecrate the Eucharist for communion – Charles still had that power too, little though he’d ever expected to use it again. But there was no host, no food of any kind. If only he could have done that much.

At least they had water.

“He will come again to judge the living and the dead – ”

Charles dipped his hand into the nearest puddle and whispered the words that would make even this muddy bracken holy.

“—the forgiveness of sins – the resurrection of the body – ” Tony was struggling now; he wanted to badly to say the entire prayer. “and – and life everlasting.”

He’d run out of breath. Charles whispered, “Amen,” and Tony only had to nod.

Blood had pooled all along his belly and chest now, and his body had begun to shake. Urgent necessity, then. Charles used the holy water to make the sign of the cross on Tony’s forehead and lips, whispering, “Through this holy unction may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed."

Tony got it out, then: “Amen.” For one moment, in his eyes, was reflected the most powerful faith – so strong as it blazed through Charles, that it humbled him.

Then there was nothing. Tony’s body was only a body. The soul was gone.

“Aw, fuck,” Armando said, slumping against the nearest tree. Charles leaned forward and rested his forehead against Tony’s.

 _God, be with Tony Catalina_ , he prayed. _Thank you for his time among us. Thank you for the strength of his belief, and welcome him into your eternal love._

 _Thank you for bringing my life together with his. He showed me that I am still your servant_.

 

**

 

The next day they got word that they might be able to get air support if they could just manage to work their way further down the mountain.

“How the hell are we supposed to move ten feet?” Ware stared out into the jungle, already so hot in the hour after sunrise that it seemed to be steaming. “They’re still on us.”

“They’re not shooting this minute,” Bund snapped. “That means we have a chance to move, and we’re going to do it.”

Charles arranged Tony’s dead body as best he could, and hoped the Army could return for him shortly. He’d had a large family back in Gulfport – five brothers and two sisters. At least Charles could write to them and tell them how courageously he’d died.

For a moment he tried to pull himself together, to get cleaner, which was one of the few useful things he could still do for the platoon’s wounded. But Charles realized, to his horror, he was unable to pull his undershirt or socks away to wash; in the heat and humidity, mold had already grown so thick that it and his clothing were in effect now part of his skin.

He shuddered, took a deep breath, got his arm under Turner’s shoulder and started moving out.

The Vietcong must finally have been sleeping, because the platoon managed to travel two whole hours before coming under fire again.

“Take cover!” Bund shouted. Here at least they had some rock to work with, an actual cliff side that could shield their backs. Charles retreated along with the rest, but some were farther out –

“Armando!” he gasped, just as Armando went down.

A leg wound – clean, well below the knee – but now Armando couldn’t walk. He was trying to crawl to cover, but he made slow progress as the bullets sprayed down around him; it was only a matter of time before he was hit again, and worse.

No duty required Charles to risk his own life for another. And yet he didn’t hesitate.

Charles dropped the medical pack and ran. He could feel the minds of their attackers – no more malevolent, no more merciful, than any others in war. A strange kind of intimacy to feel for the people who might kill him, and yet this was what God had given him to know.

He barely stooped to grab Armando, hauling him upright in an instant, and dragged him as fast as he could back to their cover. Bullets sliced through the air so thickly that Charles thought he could smell metal. _So close, so close, almost there –_

The first one felt like he’d been hit in the leg with a stone. The pain was sharp, though not severe, and yet Charles’ knee gave out from under him, sending him and Armando thudding to the ground. Mud splattered around them, and Charles struggled to rise. But his leg wouldn’t obey. He saw a sliver of white showing through the shredded knee of his clothes and realized, dully, that it was his patella, or what remained of it.

Then the second one hit him square in the gut. It felt like the breath had been knocked out of him, no worse than that. But Charles saw the blood spurting, was jerked back by his body as if he were a puppet on strings.  

The real pain followed, rushing behind him, through him, and swallowing him whole.

 

**

 

Everything was a blur after that – sometimes sharper, sometimes duller, but never wholly clear. Pain fogged his gaze, walled him in.

He knew that he and Armando had been dragged the remaining few feet to safety. Knew also that someone was trying to go through his medical pack to find supplies to help them, but there was nothing there worth having any longer. The rain beat down as mercilessly as the gunfire.

When Charles had enough coherence to pray, he did not pray to survive. He didn’t even pray for the rest of the platoon. He prayed to pass out. If he could only lose consciousness and escape the agony for a few moments –

\--but he never did.

After a while he heard chopper blades, saw the unholy flame of napalm blaze high in the jungles beyond. It was deliverance and damnation, all in one burning. The platoon was saved, and Armando would be fine.

His own situation was not as hopeful.

At the hospital one day later, when he was out of surgery and the painkillers had calmed him without knocking him out, Charles managed to ask for a pen and paper. His letters were too large and uneven, but it was the best he could do.

 

_You wanted honesty, always._

_I will fight to come home to you. I promise you that. I’ll fight with all my strength. But if I saw a patient with this wound, I would know the odds. So I can’t deceive myself now, and I won’t deceive you._

_I’m so sorry, my love. I promised to come back, and now this. You should never have been put through this kind of pain again. I should have run for Canada, run anywhere you liked, not to save my own skin but your heart. Forgive me if you can. At least I know your strength. I know you can always endure, and Jean will be safe, because she’ll always have you._

_Tell Raven that I want her to be happy. Tell Jean what joy she brought to me and to us as a family._

_Don’t tell them that I lie here listening to grown men crying for their mothers as they die – and that I remember the ones who died in front of me – and I find myself asking where God is. What He is. It’s not as if I didn’t know about death and suffering and injustice before, but it surrounds me now. It’s not my own fate that drags me down – it’s theirs, and yours, and Jean’s, and every other child orphaned, and the sheer magnitude of useless suffering that flows from this war, and all wars, and so many other things God allows to be._

_Why did doubt have to find me now? I’m so afraid, Erik – forgive me for telling you this, I know it’s hard to hear, but I must tell someone. I need to pray more than I ever have, and I can’t find the words._

_But I still know there’s a life after death. I’ll find Anya, and I’ll hold her close. We’ll wait for you together._

_Always, always, I love you._

 

And even now, he had to be sure to beg for an envelope and seal it, so that no one would read his loving farewell to another man. So stupid, useless and wrong.

Charles watched the letter go as though he were watching Erik walk away for the last time. Then he pulled himself together and was reasonably calm for the next hour or so, before the fevers began.

 

**

 

Days passed. Weeks passed. The unconsciousness Charles had prayed for in that final battle now kept closing around him like a prison. Neither his body nor his mind were wholly his own. The thick mists of pain, fever and drugs took their turns with him. The cycle never seemed to end.

During one mostly lucid hour, he realized he must be suffering from septicemia and endotoxic shock, perhaps sepsis by now. They’d gone over that in training. He’d been wise to write Erik what he had, when he had. 

Because he could write no longer; he’d grown too weak to hold a pen. There was a letter from Erik that a kindly nurse read to him, but Erik had known it would be read by others, and so only a shadow of his true voice remained in it. Once Armando came to see him before returning to the unit, but he came in an hour when Charles was in such agony he could hardly think, much less speak; in the end all Armando could do was hold his hand for a while before he had to go.

The leg wound wasn’t that serious, they told him, though the huge swaddle of bandages around his knee suggested otherwise. Probably it just looked good in comparison.

His world narrowed to the confines of the emergency renal unit, the only place he could get dialysis. There were six beds, and none of the other soldiers seemed to be in any better shape than Charles was. It seemed to him that the men around him changed very often, but he didn’t think any of them were leaving because they’d gotten better.

In a feverish haze, he heard a nurse say, “They have got to get this guy Stateside.”

“Hey, they’re shipping him to the Philippines at the weekend, if the Gulf stays clear." 

“They can’t do much more for him there than we can here.”

At least he wouldn’t die in Vietnam.

But transport was horrible – nearly as bad as getting shot again. Every movement of the bed awakened chills and sickening cramps, and set his wounds afire once more. They shot him up with so much morphine that he went into a kind of fugue state, but no matter how many times it happened, he always seemed to wake up with them still moving him, still hurting him.

“You’re going back,” a nurse whispered to Charles as she changed bags on his IV. “The good ol’ U S of A. You excited?”

“Thought – the Philippines – ”

“You’ve been here for more than a week now. Do you not remember?”

Charles wasn’t sure. Everything farther away than his own skin had begun to seem like a horrible fever dream that wouldn’t end.

The hospitals were no better than the transports. The ships were no different from the helicopters. Sometimes the lights were brighter; he was beyond noticing much more than that.

Nothing seemed to change until one day when he felt someone take his hand. Not to check his pulse or adjust an IV – not even the gentle but impersonal squeeze of a nurse – this was an actual human touch. And someone was saying his name.

“Charles? Can you hear me? Charles, please, wake up!”

He managed to open his eyes and see Raven standing beside his bed. Was it a dream? No. Not this. She was real. Here.

“Raven,” he whispered, and she smiled through her tears.

“I knew you could hear me! They said you couldn’t. Listen, you’re back, okay? You’re in California, and you’re going to be fine, wait and see.” She was being brave, her face more womanly and beautiful to him than it had ever been before. Her fingers brushed against his cheek. “They don’t know anything.”

“Love you.”

“I love you too. Can I get you – God, I don’t even know – water, or – can you read something? You probably don’t feel like it – ”

Charles managed to say, “Erik.”

Raven drew in a sharp breath, like someone who had just been cut. Her fingers squeezed his. “I’m sorry. Charles, I’m so sorry. I asked, but – Erik can’t come in. It’s a military hospital, and you’re in intensive care. They only let family members visit.”

He’d come halfway around the world, and he would still die without seeing Erik again. Charles tried to accept it, but a tear trickled from the outside corner of his eye, down to his ear.

Raven wiped it away with her fingers, and she seemed to understand that there was nothing more to say. She just held onto him.

 

**

 

The cycle of strange, tormented dreaming began again. Charles knew he was finally receiving effective treatment; he also knew that a body essentially given a month to rot did not often heal from it, regardless of the care that followed. But now sometimes Raven came, and so he held on.

“They’d allow Jean in,” she said once, “but I think it would scare her.”

“No,” Charles whispered. “Not Jean.” The poor little thing would be terrified.

Yet even Raven was allowed to visit only so often, and there were long days that never seemed to end. The fetid stink of his own poisoned blood ruined every breath. Sometimes the fever reached such a pitch that he felt as if he were a burning coal, searing away his own skin. Surely it would rip, peel back and blacken like newspaper used for kindling in a fireplace. Surely there would be nothing left of him but the seething infection within. And yet it burned on and on.

Only one thing could give him the strength to pray. Time and again, when he began to lose consciousness, he commended his spirit to God. Time and again, he defied his own expectations and came to once more. 

There was one day when Charles realized that he had to choose to keep breathing. The weight of his body was too much; it crushed his chest, and the easiest thing to do would be to simply let it bear down and have done with him. But he had promised to fight. So he fought, forcing himself to inhale over and over. That day seemed to last for years.

Although his breathing was easier by that evening, the fever rose again and he lay nearly insensate. The murmuring at the door made little sense to him at first. “Sorry about having to check your credentials – we’ve had security incidents – protestors, that kind of thing – " 

“I understand.” Didn’t Charles know that voice?

He let his head loll to the side so he could look toward the door. The first thing he saw was a figure in black – a priest in clerical garb. Then he made out the green shape in the priest’s hands. Charles realized it could only be Father Jerome’s Bible.

And yet his visitor was not Father Jerome.

Erik had come. Erik was here. For a moment the wounds didn’t hurt, the fever didn’t burn. Nothing could touch Charles for the instant he first knew he was with Erik again.

But the pain came back. It always did.

Erik stepped closer to Charles’ bed, saying to the woman who had shown him in, “You should leave us.” He paused, uneasy in a priest’s collar, then hastily added, “He may wish to confess.”

“Of course.” The door shut, and they were alone.

“Charles?” Erik came to his bedside in an instant, putting the Bible by Charles’ side as he clasped one hand in both of his. “Your friend figured out how to get me in here. Damned regulations! But clergy are the exception. Jerome got me the clothes, vouched for me.”

 _Bless you, Father Jerome._ Charles hadn’t known he still had the strength to smile. “Erik.”

“Yes. It’s me. I’m here.” Erik’s smile faded as he took in Charles’ weakness, how close he was to death. This was the first time Erik had truly understood. All the joy of their reunion drained from his face along with his color. His pain beat for a moment in Charles’ own heart. “Oh, Charles.”

How wrong it was that Erik had to suffer such a loss yet again. Why hadn’t Charles kept this from happening? He’d scorned to protect himself, but he should have done it to protect Erik. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Charles, _no_.” Erik pulled a chair close so that he could sit by the bed, and he brought his hand to the side of Charles’ face. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“—I promised you.”

“Yes. You promised you would come back to me, and you have.” Erik’s voice broke, and he leaned closer, so that his head was almost on the pillow beside Charles’. He could feel Erik’s breath soft against his cheek. “Don’t you see? You kept your promise. Now you’re home, and you’re safe, and I’m here with you.”

Charles found the strength to lift his untethered hand and grasp Erik’s wrist, just where Erik was cradling his face. Slowly Erik’s thumb brushed along his cheek, back and forth, reassuring strokes.

“You don’t have anything to feel sorry for.” The words shook, but Erik kept going, now speaking as slowly and intently as one would to a small child. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You’ve been brave, and you’ve been strong, and now you’ve come home. Nothing else will hurt you. The worst is over. You’ve come home.”

Charles managed to nod.

They were quiet together for a short while, Erik turning his face into the pillow. Charles realized that Erik was crying, but attempting to conceal it, so Charles wouldn’t be troubled. He got out, “Don’t.” When reddened eyes lifted to meet his, Charles said, “Stay here.” _Stay with me, keep looking at me, it’s okay if you cry._

Perhaps he understood what wasn’t said as well as what was, because Erik never glanced away again. He blinked away tears and whispered, “Have you been able to pray?”

“A little.”

“You need to, I think.” He might really have been a priest at that moment. “Your faith is your strength, Charles. You haven’t lost it?”

“No.”

“You still believe.” 

Charles nodded.

Erik’s expression softened with the most profound relief. “Good. That’s good. Hold onto that, always.”   

He kissed Charles’ mouth very softly, then his forehead, before again resting against the pillow so that they were almost eye-to-eye. It seemed to Charles that the world didn’t exist beyond the cocoon of Erik’s arm, their half-embrace. This was all there was and all there needed to be. 

The gentle strokes against his cheek continued, and Charles watched Erik’s grey eyes until once again he drifted into sleep. But sleep seemed kinder now.

He had come home. The worst was over. Charles had needed to know that before he could truly rest.

When he awoke again, Erik had left; the nurses would have forced him out, this late – it had to be after midnight. Pain medication had just been administered, too. Nothing felt good, but nothing hurt, either. Charles felt as if he were levitating, above the bed, even above his own body. Yet he felt like himself once more in a way he hadn’t since he was shot.

The ability to pray came back to him then – or, rather, he found it within himself, where it had always been, just lost for a while. _Thank you for bringing Erik back to me,_ Charles prayed. _Thank you for Father Jerome and his kindness. Thank you for showing me this last truth, that our love outlasts our despair, that it endures even beyond death._  

Charles felt as though he faced God – as though he were laid bare before Him, in all his weakness and doubt and humanity. Finally he was able to surrender to the will of God, more fully than he ever had before. It felt like letting go. He imagined holding out everything he was ashamed of, and everything he was proud of, and he was finally, completely at peace. 

_Thank you for every moment._

For days after that, the fevers came back, but Charles simply let them burn. He slept deeply and soundly. It was at least a week before he was able to speak coherently to Raven, and longer before the doctors stopped frowning at his chart. During that time the pain never ceased, and yet he bore it better. Still, only when one of the doctors finally smiled did Charles realize he was going to live.

 

**

 

Amazingly, the bout with sepsis was insufficient to win Charles a medical release from his tour of duty. They would simply have continued to nurse him a while longer and sent him back to Vietnam. The leg wound, however, was another story. As he no longer had a wholly functional knee, he could no longer serve, and he was honorably discharged in early October. It would have been later than that, except that Raven was anxious to get him into private medical care, and Charles successfully argued that it was ridiculous for him to take up bed space badly needed for those soldiers who could not afford their own personal physicians.

Extra medical attention was a luxury Charles was willing to accept; however, he had to scoff when he saw their ride back to New York. “A private jet? Raven, honestly.”

She scowled at him as she started up the airplane stairs, her tawny hair streaming in the breeze. “Charles, will you please relax and just … _be rich_ for once in your life?”

“Listen to the lady,” Erik said. He stood on the tarmac beside Charles’ wheelchair, the wind whipping his hair. It seemed to Charles that color itself had never been so vivid – the flush of Erik’s skin, the darkness of his sunglasses and black turtleneck, the brightness of the pale blue sky. “And look at this. We’ve found an excuse for me to hold you in public.” 

Charles grinned. “Let’s not waste it.”

With care, Erik lifted Charles into his arms and carried him up the steps. Though Charles’ side still ached, he thought it was well worth it to rest his head against Erik’s shoulder, there in front of the world.

The plane’s interior was all burnished wood and pale leather. A hospital bed had been rigged into place on one side, and his new nurse helped Erik get him comfortable.  Charles looked around eagerly before finally seeing a small face peeking around one of the swivel chairs.

“Jean?” He could feel her now – her soul, the very essence of his daughter – older, but so very much the same.

She peeked out a little farther, but still held back.

“Sweetheart.” _Remember_ , Charles thought, _you’ve been gone so long_. “I missed you.”

It was if memory came back to her all at once, as her little face lit up. “Daddy!”

But instead of running to him, she came carefully to the hospital bed, and only after he reached down one with arm did she clamber up beside him. Erik stepped close, ready to run interference, but Jean was on the opposite side from Charles’ still-healing wound, and she was sure not to put her arm down on the bandages. It was as though she knew precisely where her father hurt. Charles wished he could have hugged her more tightly, but it was enough to have his arm around her again. 

Erik drew back, satisfied. Then his eyes met Raven’s, and –

Discomfort. Bewilderment. Shame. The emotions vibrated between them so strongly Charles almost gasped. His gaze searched their faces and found nothing, because they so badly wanted nothing to be seen, not by him or by each other.

 _Have faith_ , Charles told himself, and with effort he laid it aside.

Jean said, “Don’t be sad. We’re all okay.”

“I know it is. Because you’re here with me again.” Charles cuddled her close and kissed her red hair. “Thank you for all the pictures you sent.”

“Your friend mailed them back.”

“Armando?” That good man. Charles would have to write and invite him to visit when he returned to New York. His tour of duty would be up around Christmastime.

“They came in a big envelope.” Jean gestured to show the size of the envelope, which apparently had impressed her. “We put them up in your room.”

So he’d go to sleep beneath them, just like he had in Vietnam. Charles found he liked the thought.

Erik and Raven both spoke to him frequently during the long trip back – checking on how he felt, fussing over him. They never spoke to each other.

 

**

 

Back in their room late that night, across from the collection of Jean’s drawings on one wall, Erik said, “Are you sure you’re ready?”

“No. But I want to try.”  

Charles stood up, then attempted to walk from the bed to the bathroom. He could do it, but the limp was severe enough that he had to struggle to keep himself upright. Pain arced across his knee with every movement. Still, he cleared the distance. When he got there, he felt triumphant – but looked back to see that Erik was blinking away tears.

“It won’t always be this bad,” Charles said. “You’ll see.”

“I should be comforting you,” Erik said hoarsely. “It’s not enough that you nearly died – ”

“None of that. There are men back from Vietnam who’ll never walk again, and men who will never return at all. I’m one of the lucky ones.” He took another couple of wobbly steps. “It will even out some in rehabilitation. If it’s never quite the same – well, I always thought a walking stick looked rather dashing.”

Somehow Erik summoned a smile for Charles’ benefit. “You’d make it look good.”

The mansion was quiet; everyone else was asleep. After months in the barracks or various foxholes, the opulence of his family home struck Charles as almost absurd. And yet he could hardly wait to lie in that huge, soft bed beside Erik once more.

Though of course Erik would have to rise early enough in the morning that the nurse wouldn’t find him in here –

“Can you make it back?” Erik frowned. “Or do you need help in the bathroom?" 

“It’s not that.” Charles pushed the frustration aside. Now, while he was braced – and before they slept on it even one night, turning it into distance between them – it was time to talk. “Erik, what happened between you and Raven?”

Erik’s eyes met his, shocked – but only for the first instant. “Your gift,” he said.

He willed himself to understand and accept whatever he was about to hear. “Just tell me the truth.”

As Erik rose from the bed, he opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again. “Nothing ever happened. I mean – nothing that would be – I didn’t realize.”

This made little sense, but Charles nodded as though it did.

“I leaned on her too much when you were gone, Charles. To me it was only – we were friends, better friends than we’d ever been before, and it had been so long since I’d been that close to anyone but you. It helped being able to talk to someone honestly, about you, Jean, the war, everything. But I never wanted more than that. Never. I swear it.”

Truth shone from him, and Charles slowly relaxed into the knowledge that his faith had been fulfilled.

Erik hardly seemed to notice. Regret tore at him so that his voice was ragged. “I ought to have thought about what it was like for her, but I didn’t. I – gave her the wrong impression. I’ve hurt her terribly, but she blames herself for it. If the confusion is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Raven loves you so dearly, Charles. She even said a rosary for you every night.”

“That’s as many rosaries as she’s said in her entire life.”

“You’re not angry?”

Charles limped back toward the bed. Erik rose to face him, and his strong hands caught Charles’s shoulders, providing support. “You were together a lot. You were lonely. It would have been stranger if nothing had changed between you.”

Erik’s incredulous look would have been funny at any other time. “Not even you’re that calm, Charles.”

Total honesty had to work both ways. “When I realized how close the two of you had become, I was – afraid. Upset. So jealous that I – I don’t even know what I wanted to do. But I told myself I had to believe in you.”

“And you do?”

Nodding, Charles motioned toward the bed; standing for even that brief a time was still difficult. Erik lowered him down so that they sat side by side, then brought his face closer to Charles.

“You’re certain you’re all right?” His expression remained so unsure. “Anything else you want to say, Charles, say it.”

Something broke inside him. He clutched at Erik’s T-shirt. “Don’t you ever leave me. Don’t you ever even think about leaving me, I love you so much – ”

Erik kissed him, hard, and it was perfect for the split second before Charles’ chest began to ache. They pulled apart as Charles gasped for breath, but even as he did, he smiled.

“I’ll never leave you,” Erik said. “I’m yours, always.” His hand gently combed back Charles’ hair, which had grown back while he was in the hospital to the point where it was almost wild. “You’re in no shape for me to welcome you home the way I want to.”

“Just come here. That’s enough.” Lying in his own bed with Erik in his arms – it felt like the celebration of a lifetime.

 

**

 

The next day, he sought reconciliation with Raven, and the celebration ended.

“What did Erik say?” she demanded from across the study. Her hands were fists at her sides. “What did he tell you?”

“He blames himself.” Charles kept his voice even. “He said he thought he gave you the wrong impression." 

“Wrong impression.” Raven raked her fingers through her hair. She wore it long now, flowing free in flower-child style. “That’s what he thinks. That I’m a little girl who made up a romance about him the last few months, because he stayed up late talking to me more often than he should’ve.”

The calm that had sustained Charles last night was elusive now. But he persevered. “I just don’t want things to be awkward, either between us or between Erik and you.”

“My relationship with Erik isn’t yours to control.”

“I’m not trying to – dictate anything to you, and if you want Erik to tell you this himself – ” Maybe this could have waited until he’d been home for a week or so. Charles’ head had begun to pound, and even the slight quickening of his breath from stress was enough to make him dizzy.

“He would, of course. Because he loves you.” Raven stared out the window, refusing to meet Charles’ eyes. “He loves you as much as I love him.”

The words couldn’t be unsaid. Charles’ battered mind tried to push them away, but the weight of the revelation remained. Raven was the honest one now, even braver than he had known she could be. 

She said, “See, I thought Erik knew. I thought he had to know. And maybe I wondered if – if he – all kinds of things. My mind told me every lie there was to tell about Erik Lehnsherr. One night after you were wounded, and we weren’t sure you’d even make it back to the U.S., I started crying and he just … held me in his arms.” Her voice cracked, and the raw longing there reminded Charles of one time he had wept in Erik’s arms, believing then that they would never be together. He’d been exactly where Raven was; he knew how horribly it hurt. “I told Erik we shouldn’t because it made me feel like we were betraying you, and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t even get it! That should have been my first hint. But instead I told him I loved him.” Raven shook her head, as if in disgust at someone else’s folly. “The way he pulled his hands back – I’ve never felt that dirty. That low. The worst was that I deserved it.”

Erik had revealed none of this; he’d been protecting her, Charles realized. “No. Raven, listen. The past few months – it’s been overwhelming for us all – ”

“The past few months? Charles, you idiot. You understand so much, but it never occurs to you to ask yourself what you _don’t_ understand. I’ve been in love with Erik for years.”

Another shock, another terrible truth he could never unlearn.

“Before he lived here, I told myself – he’s handsome, he’s exciting, of course I’d want – but then Erik moved in, and I saw him all the time, and I wanted to see him even more, and I had to get out of this house, out of this town – out of this country – ” Raven’s eyes glittered strangely in her distress. “And you never saw it, did you? I stayed away so you wouldn’t see, and you didn’t.”

Charles could only stare at her. The words were clumsy and cold in his mouth. “No. I didn’t see.”

“I tried to hide what I felt from you – from whatever it is you do – but I was never sure whether it worked. But it did.”

How was that possible? That God would let him see within the souls of others, and yet not allow him to see this one thing he’d needed to see more than anything else?

“Your gift has limits. We all have limits.” Raven rose and went to the small bar, but she only held the whisky bottle in her hand, not able to take the final step and pour. “When you made me promise to raise Jean with him, I thought – don’t, please, don’t. But I had to promise. You made me want what I should never have wanted. You made me stop running from the one thing I needed the most to escape.”

“… I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? Getting drafted? Getting shot? Oh, God, what the fuck is wrong with me?”

The soul she had hidden from him so well was laid bare to him now, and Charles knew the rawness of her pain, the helplessness of her desire. One of her daydreams flickered before him – her waiting in Erik’s bed, naked, until he found her and surrendered to her delight. The vision taunted Charles as mercilessly as it must have beckoned her.  “Nothing’s wrong with you.” His voice sounded strained, even to him. “I understand how you could love Erik. How could I not?”

“Spare me your pity.” Raven let the whisky bottle thud back onto the bar. “Now I’m yelling at the person I screwed over. But I just want you to – have emotions like a normal human being. How can you not have any reaction to what I just told you? Yell back. Tell me to get the hell away from your man. _Do_ something.”

“Raven, I can’t! I don’t know what to do.” Mostly he wanted to be alone until he could make some sense of what he’d just learned.

She looked back at him. The gaze they shared was one of mutual desolation. Slowly, Raven said, “I know what to do. I need to leave.”

“What?” This was all happening too fast. Charles felt as if the entire world had turned upside down and he was only hanging on by his fingertips. “You don’t have to go.”

“Yes, I do, Charles. You’re not throwing me out; I get that. It would probably be easier for you – and Jeanie – ” Her voice wavered. “—if I stuck around, but I can’t. This is about me, okay? This is what I have to do for me." 

“You’ll – move back into the city?”

“I’ll go to my place there today. Call my travel agent tomorrow. After that, who knows?” Raven tossed her hair in bitter mockery of a carefree young girl. “San Francisco, I think. Exciting things are happening there. I could do something that matters, instead of standing her looking at everything I can never have.”

Charles knew that if she fled today, their relationship might never again be the same. And yet he knew he didn’t have the right to ask her to stay. The wounds Raven had suffered weren’t ones he could heal.

Once he’d thought he could counsel anyone. That he could hear any confession impartially, and with compassion. Now his heart raced, and anger pumped within him with nowhere to go, and Charles knew how foolishly proud he had been.

Raven had told him a hard truth he needed to remember: _We all have limits._

As she started to leave, though, he managed to say, “I love you.” When her stricken eyes met his, he said, “That outlasts all the rest.”

“Hope so,” Raven said, shutting the door between them.

 

**

 

Erik cursed himself and stomped around and wondered how the hell Raven could just walk away from Jean with hardly a goodbye. At least, he did for the first day, and then he seemed determined not to mention Raven again.

After some consideration, Charles decided to let the issue lie for now. Raven had been right; her relationship with Erik wasn’t something he could control. Whether they reconciled, and on what terms, wasn’t up to him.

But sometimes he saw the shadow falling over Erik – the loss of the first close friend besides Charles he’d had in years, and the loyalty they had for each other. Maybe the bond between them had been platonic on Erik’s side, but it was nonetheless powerful.

“I feel horrible for resenting that,” Charles admitted a few days later, as he sat in the library. “Erik should have other friends. I’ve hated how isolated our lives have made us. And yet, when I see how badly he misses Raven, it devastates me.”

“You’d have to be a saint not to be jealous.” Father Jerome sipped his coffee. “But you mustn’t let your jealousy become your master.”

“I keep thinking that if I’d died – they would probably have ended up together. Eventually Erik would have come to see in Raven what she saw in him. Maybe I can’t know that for certain, but it seems very likely. And I came so close to dying. It’s as though, one breath away, one world over, they’re together raising Jean in this house.”

“Why does that trouble you so?”

Charles whispered, “Because that’s what I would have wanted, if I’d died. When I wrote what I thought would be my last letter, I told Raven I wanted her to be happy – that’s what I was thinking of. I wanted that for them, and for Jean. And now even the idea of it haunts me. Maybe it reminds me how close I was to death, close enough that I was willing to surrender something that now I would never, ever give up.”

Father Jerome nodded, accepting everything, judging nothing.

“All along. She loved him all along. How could I not have seen it?”

“Why does that make it worse for you? That her feelings for Erik went so far back.”

“Because – it does, that’s all.” Which was completely inadequate, and Charles knew it: He pushed himself to understand more deeply.  “Because it makes me feel strange about the day I asked her to help Erik raise Jean while I was gone.  It’s like I – handed them over to her.”

“And she accepted them.”

“… yes.”

“Knowing that she loved Erik, and he didn’t love her. After years of running away to protect both you and herself, she took on the responsibility.”

“Without hesitation.” Too late, Charles realized how unthinkingly cruel his request had been. He’d asked Raven to endure more than a year of unrequited love, to live out a shell of the life she really wanted. In all that time, she had never stopped fighting her own feelings. She had only admitted the truth to Erik when she wanted to protect Charles from what she might do; despite being surrounded by temptation, Raven had never betrayed him. “I’ve been sitting here trying to think how to forgive her, but I think I’m the one who needs to ask forgiveness.”

“Probably you’d both feel better forgiving each other.” Father Jerome patted Charles’ shoulder. “Though to me it sounds only as if you need to understand each other. Neither of you did wrong.” 

“And yet we hurt each other.” He sighed. “I just wish I could see her.” But that would mean she’d come back home, and was he ready to watch Erik welcome her back too?

“Give her a while. Yourself, too. They say time heals all wounds, which is a fat lie if ever I heard one. But it can help where nothing else will.”

Charles nodded. “When I can next get into the city, I’d like to see you. There’s – so much beyond this I need to discuss. I’d come to confession if I thought the monsignor wouldn’t choke.”

“Of course.” Father Jerome’s hand closed over Charles’ shoulder. “You’re troubled? Some of the stories we’ve heard about the war – ”

“No. I mean, yes. I’m troubled. But not only by what happened over there. Also by – “ Charles considered this carefully. “—the limits of my own compassion. Not to mention the limits of my understanding.”

“I warn you now, son, the exploration of one’s own ignorance is a pursuit that lasts a lifetime.” 

Charles had to laugh. “I can believe it.”

“I’d like to talk with you too. Several of the young men come home from Vietnam– it weighs on them. This war isn’t like any of the others we’ve known. Talking to you would help me help them.”

He remembered Tony Catalina and the lesson he’d taught Charles: There were still ways for him to do God’s work in the world. “I’d like that.”

“It’s good to see you, my friend.” Father Jerome grinned. “Particularly now that you’re properly dressed, for a change.”

Charles touched the brim of the Yankees cap. “The least I owe you, under the circumstances.” His smile gentled. “You have no idea what you did for me. And for Erik. We’ll never forget it.”

Father Jerome shrugged it off. “The next time I come, Father Erik had better not be at the park with Miss Jean. I have an opportunity to discuss with him.”

“An opportunity?”

“There are rumors the monsignor will retire, and perhaps Erik should put in for the position. After all, we’ll need a priest with experience.”

 

**

 

The mansion’s old-fashioned clawfoot tubs were beautiful, but difficult for Charles to step in and out of now that his right leg was forever altered. They’d probably have to take one of them out eventually, put in something duller and more useful. For now, though, Charles liked bracing his naked body against Erik before lowering himself into the bath. 

“Oh, that’s nice,” he sighed, stretching his leg out.

“Yes,” Erik agreed with a grin. “I’ve missed getting you naked.” 

Flirtation was almost the limit of their intimacy so far – Charles was hardly in shape for anything else – but he missed Erik so much. Maybe they could at least … be closer. He glanced over his shoulder. “I remember there being room in this tub for two.”

Erik raised an eyebrow, then began stripping off his clothes.

They barely fit, but still, it was nice to lean back against Erik’s chest. Wet fingers brushed his hair away from his forehead, and he angled his bad leg onto the rim of the tub to make room for Erik’s around him.

Charles had concentrated so much on how that leg felt that he’d hardly noticed how it looked. Now it struck him anew: The newly ragged asymmetry of his calf, the angry dark twist of scar tissue around his knee that stood out from the rest of his skin.  The thick red line up and down his abdomen wasn’t quite as ugly, but that was the best that could be said for it. Pink ragged patches on his shoulders and arms showed where the medical staff had cut away the moldy uniform that had grown to his skin; those would heal completely in time, but they hadn't yet. 

As he touched the edge of the scar on his belly, Erik covered that hand with his own. “You’re not troubled by these, are you?”

“Only a little.” Charles remembered his pleasure in his sculpted body after basic training; he’d known it for vanity then, and now understood another reason why vanity was so damaging. It hurt when it fled, as it always did. 

Erik nuzzled the side of his neck. “You know you’re always beautiful to me.”

“Don’t overdo it. I know you love me as I am. But it’s a stretch to call this beautiful.”

“It’s proof that you survived and came home to me. Nothing’s more beautiful than that.”

Charles lifted Erik’s hand to his and kissed it – then unfolded it and kissed the palm, more slowly. After that, he pressed his lips against each finger in turn. Warm droplets of water trickled from Erik’s skin onto Charles’ lips.

Erik whispered, “Let’s rub you down." 

For the sake of practice, Charles should have walked to the bed himself, but he leaned on Erik the whole way, then submitted to a vigorous rub with the bath towel. The roughness of the terrycloth made Charles’ body flush every place he was touched.  Erik’s own skin remained damp as he worked from Charles’ shoulders down his back, then around to his thighs. As he knelt and parted Charles’ legs, Charles felt his body respond with painful sharpness, hardening almost in an instant.  

Slowly Erik massaged his thighs, thumbs moving upward. Without lifting his face, Erik raised his eyes to Charles’ as he slowly parted his lips. Then his tongue brushed along the line of Charles’ cock, and Charles gasped.

Erik took him in. The rest of the world vanished in the wet heat of his mouth. Charles reeled, shuddered, clutched at Erik’s hair. To feel his head tilt and move as he sucked harder, took Charles in deeper – it drove him half-mad. He wanted to do all kinds of things his body was in no shape to do – wanted to thrust into Erik’s mouth, wanted to drag him up to the bed and take him as desperately and hungrily as he’d dreamed that night when he wrote that letter –

Then Erik’s tongue swirled around the very tip, sucked forceful and fast right there, and Charles felt the dizzying rush of inevitability – sometimes better than climax itself. The hard sweet curl of orgasm long-denied pulled him up, over, down, out of his skin and back again. His fingers wound into Erik’s hair as Erik drank it all with a swallow and a groan of satisfaction.

Charles reeled – partly from pleasure, partly because his body wasn’t quite sure how to handle that much stimulation yet. Instantly Erik was by his side. “You’re all right?”

“So much – so much better than all right – ”

“Lie down.”

Erik eased him back onto the mattress; Charles lay there, breaths fast and shallow, trying to see through the blurry rush that sometimes preceded fainting. The rush faded, though, leaving behind only the aftermath of intense pleasure.  He imagined himself on a beach after the tide had gone out, still wet with sea spray, splayed beneath the sun.

But Erik still looked concerned. “We shouldn’t have rushed things.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I promise.” Charles cupped Erik’s face in his hand. “Come here." 

“Oh, no. You’re in no condition to make love.”

Although Charles wanted to protest, he knew that in some ways Erik was right. His tender belly wouldn’t accept bending into certain positions; others were impossible because of his knee. His heartbeat pounded as though he’d just sprinted across the lawn.

But that didn’t mean Erik had to go without. 

“Here.” He rolled over just far enough to reach into the nightstand; the lotion was just where he’d left it. “Come lie next to me.”

Erik hesitated, torn between caution and desire. Already, though, he was beginning to get hard again; when Charles drew him down for a long, open-mouthed kiss, Erik gave in. 

Charles wrapped his slick hand around Erik’s cock and started to stroke, slow and easy. Erik grunted, bowed his forehead against Charles’ shoulder – hair still wet and warm – and began thrusting into his waiting grip. Smiling, Charles kept working him, going faster. With his other hand he brushed his thumb against Erik’s nipple, making him gasp.

Then something in Erik cracked, and he seized Charles harder as he gave into it completely – fucking Charles’ hand, like there was nothing else he wanted, nothing else he could want. Charles whispered, “That’s it – that’s just how I want you to take me, when we can – Erik, that’s it – ”

Erik cried out roughly, and Charles felt him come in his palm, hot and wet. When they kissed, Erik was still shaking.

For a few moments they lay there, spent, staring into each other’s eyes.  Though Charles felt nearly overcome, it was Erik who had to blink back tears.

“Shhh. It’s all right.” Charles kissed his cheek, his lips.  

“I’d given up. That night in the hospital – Charles, I never wanted to give up, but you looked so weak. Almost gone. I didn’t dare hope.”

“I almost had too. Thank God you reached me.”

“Thank Jerome, at least.”

“And thank you. You helped me to pray again. I think it saved me.”

Erik nestled closer to Charles within their tangle of damp sheets. “I thought you said – you believed God rarely answered prayers like that.”

“I didn’t pray to survive. I thanked God for my life. For every part of my life. I stood before Him and knew that He saw me entire.” How could he put this? Charles lay quiet as he sought the words; Erik waited patiently. “I looked into the eyes of God, and I knew I had sins to confess, but loving you wasn’t one of them.  Only then – only when I faced final judgment – did I truly believe God understood. Before, in moments of doubt, I thought perhaps He … accepted what I was, that He condoned our relationship, but no more than that, do you see? But I knew then that He understood my love for you is the best of me. That I’m right to be as proud of loving you as any other way I’ve experienced God’s grace. Prouder, maybe.”

Erik whispered, “Is that truly what you’ve come to believe?” 

“I believed it before. I know it now.”

 

**

 

The next day, Charles had a party to attend.

He sat in a chair in Jean’s room, sipping invisible tea as he was politely introduced to all dolls and stuffed animals acquired since he’d left for Vietnam. There were quite a lot of them, actually. Erik had spoiled her –

No, not Erik. That wasn’t his way. Raven was the one who had cheered a lonely child with a pink plush dog, a baby doll that opened and shut its eyes, a Barbie in a gold evening gown.

“It’s okay,” Jean said, never looking up from the Barbie. “Aunt Raven’s happier now.”

Charles put the blue plastic teacup down as carefully as he would have a real one. “Do you think so?”

“She wanted to marry Uncle Erik, but he’s married to you already. That made her sad. She needs to go find somebody else to marry. Don’t worry, though. She still loves us.”

There were so many things Charles needed to deal with, right away, that he hardly knew where to start. “Jean – you know Uncle Erik and I – ”

“It’s a _secret_.” She kept brushing the doll’s golden hair. “I know _that_.” 

How could she? How did she know about Raven’s feelings for Erik? A perceptive child might pick up on those things – it wasn’t beyond imagining – but how had she also known that he would be worried about her telling others about him and Erik before anything else?

Jean looked up at him then. “The same way you know, silly.”

Charles had begun thinking of his gift differently many months ago, when he first went to Vietnam; now that small shift became a revolution. His eyes widened as he realized his daughter was like him – that his gift from God was not unique.

Once it would have stung. Now it shone, a possibility almost too wonderful to comprehend.

All his life, Charles had believed that he was given the ability to see into other souls so that he might understand people’s inner struggles, the better to sympathize with them. To bear witness. And, as he had told Erik, bearing witness was a noble purpose. It had let him to devote his life to charity, to counsel and console those who needed it most.

But what if he had only begun to discover what his gift could do?

No, not his gift. _Their_ gift.

God’s generosity was greater than he’d ever dared to imagine. And maybe there was more Charles could do in the world than he’d ever dreamed before.

Carefully he said, “Jean, do you remember telling Uncle Erik that you were saving up your thoughts for me until I got back?”

“Uh-huh!” The Barbie was tossed aside; Jean was so excited now that she was wriggling. “I saved lots and lots for you. Do you want to see?”

Charles held out one hand; Jean flattened her own hand against his, her fingers spreading wide over his palm. His daughter’s delight flowed through him – as his did through her, he realized, when she began to grin.

Everything Charles had ever believed was about to change, and he wasn’t afraid.

He whispered, “Show me everything.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks muchly to Lipsum, whose very thoughtful feedback on earlier stories in the series definitely helped me keep going.


End file.
